Where is Hong Kong’s Neon Museum?

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Between them, Hong Kong’s neon advocates have collected hundreds of handpainted sign boxes, glass tubes and original drawings. That’s on top of new works created by neon artists, not to mention decades of photographs documenting Hong Kong’s evolving neon landscape and a rich cinematographic legacy infused with neon light. 

So where is Hong Kong’s neon museum?

“That’s the dream,” says PolyU scholar Brian Kwok, whose office is packed with neon artefacts he has recovered from dismantled signs and old neon workshops. With the right support, it’s a dream that could come true. There are three full-fledged neon museums around the world and dozens more dedicated to all kinds of signage; plenty of art and history museums have collected neon, too.

But it’s not an easy task. Considering how widespread and prolific neon signage has been over the past century, you’d think there would be even more museums dedicated to this enchanting form of illumination. Despite growing public and scholarly appreciation for the historic, artistic and cultural value of neon, however, many institutions struggle to find the space or resources they need to preserve neon heritage. That was the case for Berlin’s Buchstabenmuseum, which was founded in 2005 to showcase neon and other types of signage rescued from the junk heap. After 20 years in operation, the museum was forced to close its doors in October 2025 due to cutbacks in public funding.

Still, the experience of the world’s neon and signage museums can offer plenty of lessons — and inspiration — for Hong Kong. “It has certainly not been easy or without its challenges,” says Ilona Karwińska, co-founder of the Neon Muzeum in Warsaw. “But the overwhelmingly positive public response is for us the sole motivational factor to continue the preservation of historical neon signs.”

It’s a passion project

Behind every neon museum, there are people who have sacrificed years of time, money and energy to keep the neon glow alive. “Most museums dedicated to neon are very different than the typical museum you might think of,” says Corrie Siegel, director of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA) in Los Angeles. “If you’re thinking about the history of museums, they often started in a rich guy’s nice house, or they were built to contain the effects of some governmental power. Neon museums come from scrappy people that are taking rusty old signs in their pickup trucks or on mass transit, or however they can, because they see there’s value in these objects. That’s really key — the passion.”

MONA was founded in 1981 by neon sculptor Lili Lakich and painter Richard Jenkins. “This was the first museum dedicated to neon art and signage,” explains Siegel. “When we were founded, neon was seen as very trashy. It was incentivised by the US government and a lot of sign companies to get neon out of view because it was a marker of urban decline.” But artists like Lakich and Jenkins, who had grown up in neon’s heyday, saw something worthwhile in the glow — and the removal of signs motivated them to save what they could, one sign at a time. 

“MONA has never had a huge donor,” says Siegel. “It has always been small donations and offerings that we have provided for public view for minimal charge. That’s how we have kept open for the last 40-plus years. It’s a great lesson: if you see value in something, you can’t wait for people to catch up with you because at that point, what you value may be gone.”

Karwińska and her partner, graphic designer David Hill, came to the same conclusion in 2005 when they began documenting Warsaw’s neon signs. “We began to witness the removal of a substantial number of neon signs,” she says. “They were evidently being discarded and earmarked for destruction — something that struck an immediate chord and motivated us to actively prevent their eradication.” After Karwińska presented her photos in an exhibition, many shopowners and landlords came forward to offer their old neon signs. 

“We now have more than 300 unique neon signs and other artefacts in our collection,” says Karwińska. That includes hundreds of blueprints, plus the entire contents of a 1960s-era neon workshop run by signmaker Zygmunt Lipiński, which the museum plans to reconstruct in their space and open to the public by the end of 2025. So far, about 100 of the museum’s signs have been restored and are on public display. 

The specific challenge of neon

Putting neon signs on display is easier said than done. They’re enormous compared to most objects displayed in a museum; after all, they were intended to catch the attention of passersby outdoors. MONA has occupied five different spaces over the past four decades, including a three-year period from 2012 to 2015 when it had a storage facility but nowhere to display its collection to the public. In 2016, it found a new home as part of a redevelopment project in the suburban city of Glendale, thanks to a partnership between the municipal government and a private developer. “Neon is now being seen as a tool for urban revitalisation,” notes Siegel.

In 2025, the Neon Muzeum was forced to move from the space it had occupied in a former industrial building since its opening in 2012. “Our former landlords had other plans [for the space],” says Kariwińska. Luckily, Warsaw’s municipal government provided the museum with a lifeline by helping to finance its move into the Palace of Culture and Science, a landmark high-rise complex that opened in 1952. It took six months to move the museum’s public displays and archives. “Enormous resources were employed to achieve the move,” says Karwińska. “Needless to say, I hope we never have to go through this physically and mentally exhausting exercise again.”

The sheer bulk of neon signs is not the only challenge. There’s also the question of how exactly to restore them. “Sign restoration and preservation is a relatively new field,” says Siegel. “There are different schools of thought. Some think the patina of the metal, the rust and chipped paint — all of that is really important. But some think that if the sign doesn’t look the way it was intended to look when it was first erected, then you’re doing it a disservice.” In at least some cases, MONA has compromised by repairing or rebuilding one side of a sign while leaving the other in a weatherworn condition.  

Museums also need to decide how to display the signs they have collected. The Las Vegas Neon Museum, founded in 1996 and open to the general public since 2012, keeps 250 unrestored signs and 28 restored and illuminated signs in a so-called Neon Boneyard that spans nearly one hectare of desert land. MONA, by contrast, operates like a more traditional museum, with a permanent indoor showcase of restored signs, plus rotating exhibitions of contemporary neon art and a programme of workshops and events. 

Sometimes, a conventional museum space isn’t even necessary. “Neon signs shine the brightest in our streets,” notes Zolima CityMag contributor Cardin Chan, former general manager of Tetra Neon Exchange, which has collected many neon signs in Hong Kong. Through its LUMENS initiative — short for Living Urban Museum of Electric and Neon Signs — MONA has helped fund and organise the restoration of many neon signs in Los Angeles with the goal of keeping them in place. In Las Vegas, the Neon Museum has installed 15 historic signs as public art pieces in various locations around the city. In Canada, Edmonton has taken a similar though more concentrated approach. Its Neon Sign Museum, owned and maintained by the city government, consists of 20 historic signs from around the city that have been transplanted to the exterior wall of an old warehouse building.

Hong Kong neon on display

There is one museum in Hong Kong where you can see at least part of the city’s neon heritage on permanent display: M+. In 2013, the museum began collecting some remarkable neon signs that were being removed. Today, two of them — the 1976 sign for Kai Kee Mahjong and the famous neon cow for Sammy’s Kitchen, made around 1978 — are visible round the clock through a ground-floor window in the M+ conservation and storage facility, opposite the museum’s main entrance. 

Another neon sign, made in 1963 for Very Good Tailor, is showcased in the museum’s permanent design exhibition, Making It Matters. Two others, a 1959 vintage sign for Shun Hing Restaurant and a fish-shaped emblem made around 1970 for Law Fu Kee Congee and Noodle Expert, are housed in the museum’s archives, along with 360 objects from Nam Wah Neonlight and the China Neonlight Advertising Company.

But that’s it. M+ stopped collecting neon signs in 2017 and there are no firm plans to collect any more. “Often signs are in quite poor condition after decades out in the open,” says the museum’s curator of Hong Kong visual culture, Tina Pang. “To keep them in a secure and stable condition without loss of the painted surface decoration, or loss of the glass tubes — this requires considerable resources in storage facilities, manpower and time. To be responsible, any collecting decision is made with reference to the individual neon signs on a case by case basis, their condition, potential for display or other public programmes.” 

Pang says the museum recently completed a “pilot project” to relight the Very Good Tailor sign, but it is still developing a conservation strategy for the other four signs in its collection. “For the longer term, we are developing a strategy for the conservation, display and other public programmes of our current collections. This will inform any future collecting priorities,” she says.

Other sources inside the museum say the collection of neon signs has long been a contentious issue because of the cost and complication of housing and maintaining them. M+ played a pivotal role in sparking public interest in Hong Kong neon through its 2014 NEONSIGNS.HK exhibition, and it led the way in conserving Hong Kong’s neon heritage when many people still took it for granted. But it’s clear from speaking to past and present curators that neon is just one small part of the museum’s focus. 

That leaves the potential of a neon museum up to Hong Kong’s dedicated community of neon advocates. Which is only natural, if the history of neon and signage museums around the world is any indication. They are the product of plucky grassroots initiatives that have grown bit by bit over many years. Hong Kong already has what it needs to create one of its own: we’re just missing the physical space and financial support needed to make it happen.

For the best case scenario, look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where MONA has not only provided a window to neon history, it has kept the neon ecosystem alive for nearly 50 years. “Our museum is only a sum of the parts of the community we represent,” says Siegel. “Having a space where you have all these mad genius weirdos and eccentric visionaries participating and seeing value in a culture that for a long time was disparaged — that really made a great impact on the preservation efforts in concert with the artists and preservationists we work with. It has become a blueprint for cities across the world.”

Editorial note: After publication, this story was amended to expand a quote from M+ curator Tina Pang.