The recent appointment of the Sydney-based curator Suhanya Raffel as the executive director of Hong Kong’s M+ museum has been welcomed by arts professionals in the region, who say she will boost the much-delayed flagship project of the West Kowloon Cultural District. But some also raised concerns about the challenges she faces in Hong Kong, including the complex political landscape, stifling bureaucracy and rising costs.
Raffel joined the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney as the director of collections in 2013. Previously, she worked at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (Qagoma) in Brisbane, where she organised the critically acclaimed Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art.
She takes up her new post in November, replacing Lars Nittve, who stepped down in January. Nittve told us in 2014: “It’s no secret that Hong Kong is a complicated place.”
M+, a vast new museum of 20th- and 21st-century culture twice the size of Tate Modern in London, is expected to open by 2019, two years later than planned. Raffel will be tasked with building up the museum’s burgeoning collection and keeping construction from falling further behind schedule.
She is no stranger to either task. “Raffel helped build Qagoma’s contemporary Asia Pacific collection into one of the most significant public collections in the field,” says Russell Storer, now the senior curator at the National Gallery Singapore, who worked with Raffel at Qagoma.
He notes that she is “adept at negotiating various stakeholders and complex bureaucracies”, having helped launch the Gallery of Modern Art in 2006 at Queensland Art Gallery. She also helped steer the Sydney Modern expansion project at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, due for completion in 2021.
Jehan Chu, a Hong Kong-based art adviser and vice chairman of Para Site contemporary gallery, called the appointment a “welcome surprise for Asia’s contemporary art community”. Her “fresh perspective, sharp eye and strong relationships” should ensure a smooth transition “when confronted with the reality of Hong Kong’s political landscape”, he says. Raffel declined to comment on her priorities for the post.
