Casino licenses are presently up for renewal – so diversification into art (as well as investment in other GBA projects) is on the agenda of the owners, not least because it is firmly on the government agenda.
In terms of traditional art venues in the city, there is of course a Macau Museum of Art – well respected – together with many smaller initiatives. But in terms of resources and scale, the casino resorts have to be part of the answer to the question of how Macau becomes a cultural destination. 
Before the West gets sniffy about such resorts as locations for art, it is worth remembering that galleries are migrating to places such as Palm Beach, St Moritz and Aspden – places where the rich go to play. Art as a luxury good has hardly been invented by Asian IRs.It is not surprising that next year’s Art Macau – the city’s major months long art event will use, among other venues, the IR exhibition spaces (the theme is, so it is rumoured, ‘Frankenstein’).
Some think Macau’s cultural future lies in performance (compare Las Vegas). But Cirque du Soleil, which was in Macau for several years, did not do well, or so we are told.

Across its long history, Macau – and its human history stretches more than 4000 years – has been a place of comings and goings. In 1277 around 50,000 refugees fled the Mongol conquest of China and settled in the coastal area; and in 1557 it became a Portuguese colony, the first European one in Asia. Across its more recent history, it has been, again, a haven for refugees – whether in the two world wars, or during the Cultural Revolution; and in 1999 it moved masters – from Portugal to China – and became a Special Autonomous Region (SAR) following on from Hong Kong two years earlier.

But that re-absorption did not ossify Macau’s internationalisation. In 2002, the Chinese government internationalised the gambling industry after a four decade long monopoly by Stanley Ho. The US players came to town; and in 2020, Macau’s revenue from gambling was US $7.57 billion; more than twice that of Las Vegas.
Macau continues to try to bring the world to the city, offering diversity in its cultural experiences – some in commodified forms that are common to mass tourist resorts the world over. There is The Parisian Macau with a miniature Eiffel Tower and in 2021 The Londoner Macau was born out of the Sands Hotel – with designs by the celebrity footballer David Beckham no less and a fish and chip restaurant by the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. (Has no one told the rest of the world that it is a long time since fish and chips was the national dish of the UK?)
A different sign of the-world-in-Macau was the accolade in 2017 of the UNESCO designation ‘Creative City of Gastronomy’. Celebrity chefs inevitably helped to give it such an award but it did highlight Macau’s food as an extraordinary blend of European and Chinese cuisine.Macau might be a good bellwether of how tolerant the central government of China is of cultural diversity and hybridity. In other Chinese cities, there are reliable stories doing the rounds that foreign museums are finding it difficult to secure approval for large bodies of contemporary works; and there are stories that Covid was the perfect excuse for pausing/closing down the well-regarded Macao International Film Festival. The reason – unease about what was shown. Even if not the case, the story does not help overseas confidence in Macao’s commitment to culture. Let us see if it does return and in what form.
This is undoubtedly a sensitive moment in China and there is much talk in China as well as elsewhere of ‘China versus the West’ –  which does not help to make officials risktakers. But if the Chinese government’s nationalist narrative which is suspicious of so much foreign culture continues to intensify, then what is the cultural future for cities such as Macau where cultural diversity and hybridity is in its bones?