“Citizens don't trust politicians or the media, but they do trust museums. We have an obligation to them“
Interview with Suhanya Raffel, President of CIMAM and Director of M+ in Hong Kong, for the newspaper El Mundo, conducted by journalist Vanessa Graell (Spain, October 18, 2024).
Read the original version here: Page 1 and Page 2
She is one of the most powerful women in art: she chairs the International Committee of Museums of Modern Art and heads Hong Kong's powerful M+. “There are still surprising censorships,” she says.
At the end of the Roaring Twenties, while the United States was building its colossal skyscrapers, New York inaugurated the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) would mark the artistic canon of the 20th century. In the 1970s, Paris transformed its historic center with the Centre Pompidou and a tubular architecture by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano that stood as a work of art in itself: far from losing its leadership, the capital of old Europe wanted to continue to mark the pulse of an avant-garde without isms.
In November 2021, Hong Kong was to launch the spectacular M+, Asia's largest global museum of contemporary visual culture in the heart of Victoria Harbour, with a striking design by Herzog & de Meuron. An immense luminous LED façade, a roof garden, a building that seems to levitate.... Art coordinates have changed, and the M+ symbolizes the growing power of Southeast Asia, the crossroads between East and West. Since 2019, Suhanya Raffel has been its musuem director: first of a concept, now of Asia's flagship museum, which looks on equal footing with the MoMA or the Centre Pompidou itself.
Raffel's biography reflects the nomadic essence of the South Pacific, of Hong Kong itself, where more than 40% of its inhabitants are foreigners: she was born in Sri Lanka, but in the face of the country's political instability (which would eventually lead to civil war), her family emigrated to Australia when she was 14 years old. After graduating in art history in Sydney, she went to the UK, where she worked at the Tate. In the 1990s, she took the reins of the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, one of Australia's emblematic museums, and launched the Asia Pacific Triennial, which has become a reference today.
Since 2023, Raffel has chaired the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), an organization founded in 1962 in The Hague, which today has more than 800 directors and curators from all over the world.
She is one of the most powerful women in the art world, but her manners are different, her discourse more sensitive, her proposals more experimental and her broader vision. This is the first interview she has given to a Spanish media.
Q. The M+ is a very young museum, which we discovered because of the big Yayoi Kusama retrospective at the Guggenheim in Bilbao in 2022. In addition to an impressive building it has one of the largest collections in Asia. Is it the new icon of Hong Kong?
A. In the late 1990s, Hong Kong became the great international center of finance, innovation and technology, but there was a certain image of a cultural desert. Which is not entirely true, because there were many creative platforms, but there was a lack of a great modern art museum. The M+ is Asia's first global museum of contemporary visual culture, a bedside institution for the 21st century. Our raison d'être is modern and contemporary visual culture, but treated from an interdisciplinary perspective. That is why we work with design and architecture, visual art, moving image and ink, which is a very important discipline in the Asian context. For the first time, we have in Asia an institution comparable to the Centre Pompidou in Paris or the MoMA in New York, both in scale, ambition and purpose. It's like Hong Kong itself.
Q. Is it significant that your motto is 'visual culture' and not 'contemporary art'?
A. You have to go back to the genesis of MoMA in New York, when three women collectors [Abby Rockefeller, Lillie Plummer and Mary Quinn Sullivan] created an institution that looked at fashion, design, architecture and art as encompassing a whole modern purpose around culture. We do it in the 21st century and from Hong Kong, which is already a city saturated with visual culture: cinema, neon, street life, the way architecture has grown.... The image of the great Asian metropolis comes from Hong Kong: the vertical city, with a density of people that rises towards the sky. But more than 80% of the city is still nature, although it may be surprising, because we imagine it to be saturated and intense. And that is reflected in M+: a third of the museum space is public and open, with parks and leisure spaces for people to simply gather. On the other hand, the name M+ is very important, as it represents all disciplines, including those yet to come. The M+ is a museum. And more. The words modern and contemporary were not wanted to be used because of their association with Western canonical history. Because the way modern is expressed outside Asia is very different.
Citizens don't trust politicians or the media, but they do trust museums. We have an obligation to them.
Q. Traditionally, the artistic canon has been developed in the West. Is Asia now setting the new trends? Will it drive new canons?
A. When I was studying art history at the University of Sydney, Australian art was not even included, it was just European art. The histories we were taught about Asia were all pre-modern and ancient. No way! Asian art is not just about the past. It has to reflect all of us and all the complexity of the continent. From what is described as the Global South, we have been working for years to broaden the understanding of narratives and who is making them to include the great absences, whether they are women or people of color in places that have not been recognized or have not received the attention they deserved. And that's partly because there was no institutional framework in place to provide those storylines in a coherent and substantive way. The creation of new institutions is crucial in this knowledge building: it's about recognizing that there were and are great artists who have come from Asia. When I am asked if Asia is becoming more powerful..., I think Asia was always powerful. It is full of fabulous creators, artists, designers, performers and writers. We are just learning to value them and understand the complexity of how they fit into such a densely interconnected contemporary world with large migrant populations. My story is exactly that: the story of people everywhere. I'm from Sri Lanka, Australia, the UK.... And now from Hong Kong.
Q. In recent years Hong Kong has emerged as the new stronghold of the art market, surpassing London or Paris. We can see it especially in the auctions, with stratospheric records that used to be set in Europe. How is this boom reflected in the museum?
R. Hong Kong is a real hub. It has displaced London in commercial terms and even rivals New York. The M+ has around 2.5 million visitors a year and in a very short time we have positioned ourselves among the top 20 museums in the world. But there is a peculiarity that is not found elsewhere: 80% of our audience is between 18 and 45 years old. People come because they find things they can't see anywhere else. In fact, there is no collection like the M+'s in the whole world. And that means we are a destination institution, the only one that brings all these disciplines together in one place. An example: Japan has the largest number of Pritzker Prize-winning architects in the world, but no institution that deals with analyzing, exhibiting and valuing architecture. We do that, we show cross disciplines.
Q. Your area of influence is immense: all of Southeast Asia, where in recent years there has been a veritable explosion of biennials and triennials. It's a vertiginous rhythm, unthinkable in the West, even though the Venice Biennale is still the most transcendent.
A. Yes, the growth is astonishing. They are very important platforms to evaluate what is happening today: a place to review, educate and reach out. Venice was one of the first, but people forget about Sydney, which is now half a century old. The rise of Asia is due to changing economies, the development of significant middle and upper classes, and with it the responsibility and obligation to reach out to all audiences. The obvious question is: How does the old world, the European and North American world, function with collecting institutions over 100 years old that reflect histories of colonialism and empires? How can those collections be looked at again intelligently and with empathy? We need to think about our world today in a more reflective way, always from humanism, respecting the pain that some of these collections have embodied?
Q. One of the hot debates in Europe is that of decolonization, which many governments and museums have approached in different ways, often generating resounding controversies. How do you decolonize a museum?
R. There is no one way. Obviously, you have to involve governments because of repatriation issues. But sometimes it's also about institutions having the legal right to hold a work as custodians, not as owners. Because in the end we are talking about human cultural capital. It belongs to all humanity, but at the same time to certain peoples who should have access to these pieces because they are ancestral and part of their history. It is a multi-layered work, that is why it is so complex. The fact that there are broad debates, even controversial ones, is positive, it helps to give more elaborated and reflexive answers. There is no single recipe, it is a work in progress, a journey, not an end in itself.
“We are seeing more and more political intervention in museums. We have to continue to educate the administration. There is still surprising censorship”.
“Hong Kong is a great Art 'Hub': It has displaced London in commercial terms and rivals New York. Also, 80% of the M+ audience is between 18 and 45 years old.”
Q. Decolonialism, feminism, climate change, indigenous creation? There are certain themes that recur in museums and biennials around the world. Although it is the public agenda in a globalized world, sometimes it gives the feeling that we see the same things in Madrid as in Gwangju (South Korea, where the oldest biennial in Asia is held). Isn't there a danger of falling into fashions or a certain homogenization?
A. Actually, I don't think so. We are now witnessing the recognition of diversity in many parts of the world. That's why we can also see similarities and parallels. Sometimes, yes, the same artists seem to be from here, but when you go there, things change. Let me explain: in our museum we have a very important collection of Duchamp and people ask, 'Why did you choose Duchamp?' Well, because we have a very important collection of Chinese avant-garde art. And those Chinese artists use Duchamp as a tool, although when they made their work they had never seen him. By incorporating Duchamp we decentralize it with the artists around him and it contributes to our understanding of how Duchamp could be thought of from Hong Kong and the context in which his work is structured. I find it a beautiful thing to add a layer of thought and knowledge to the canon. There are a number of philosophical connections, an idea of the multiple, the sense of play or chance, which also have an Asian root.
Q. We talk a lot about Asia and the West, but as director of CIMAM, how do you see contemporary African creation? Diaspora artists are more and more represented in museums around the world, but Africa always seems to be the forgotten one?
A. I don't think it has been forgotten. At CIMAM we have almost 20 members from Africa. Globally it is increasingly represented through exhibitions and collections. A lot is happening on the African continent, although perhaps the West is not aware of it. From the Lagos Biennale to the work of new centers and institutions.... In time it will become much more visible. Very important centers are being created with high-level collections and professionals that tell the stories of the continent, of each region. Moreover, they are opening up to the world. The African art centers tell us: 'We are here, come. And we make sure we do it, but in the context that our partners tell us: 'This is how we would like you to come'. The nuance is very important: we can't just land there. We need to work together to build from equality.
Q. Since 2012, CIMAM has had a unique platform, Museum Watch, an observatory that warns of irregularities or critical situations in museums. And this year it has denounced two cases of institutional malpractice in Spain: at the CAAC in Seville [the dismissal of its director by the Junta de Andalucía] and at the IVAM in Valencia [the attacks on Nuria Enguita by the 'conselleria' of Culture in the hands of VOX]. Despite the protocols of good practices, do politicians still intervene in museums?
A. Museum Watch is something quite exceptional that articulates our core beliefs. Its members come from all over the world, with voices reflecting different positions and coming together to make a joint statement. Unfortunately, we are seeing more and more political intervention in museums globally. Codes of good practice, ethics and good governance are a matter of education. And I am talking about everyone: politicians and administrations, as well as communities, need to be educated to understand the need for real independence in each of our institutions. To maintain our integrity, we must ensure our independence. Interestingly, several studies confirm that people trust museums more than politicians. They do not trust politicians or the media, but they do trust museums. We have an obligation and a responsibility to those citizens. If they trust the museum it is because they see the reflection, the research, the stories we tell in our exhibitions. When governments question that independence our job will be to advise and educate them so they see that it's not a good idea. You can never take anything for granted, we are continually educating and advocating for that integrity in every way. We live in a time of changing moral codes within societies. Even now, in the 21st century, there are surprising censorships and you think, 'how is it possible for this to happen?' But it is. Our job is to point it out, address it and find ways to make room for it in our institutions. It's never straightforward or simple.
Q. Personally, throughout your career have you experienced political or even commercial pressures?
A. There was a time when I felt quite a lot of pressure and it was annoying.... I was living in the UK and people would ask me where I was from. “Australia,” I'd say, ‘No, no, where are you really from, because I'm not Australian’ (sighs).
Where am I really from? Because I'm also from Australia. And even though I was born in Sri Lanka, when I go back to the island they ask me where I'm from. I say Sri Lankan, but they say “No, you're not from here”. Being in this place, or non-place, has helped me understand many artistic practices. I feel very comfortable always being from somewhere else. Accepting that physical and skin tone difference has allowed me to understand communities that are on the margins, that have been exiled or moved out of necessity, for economic reasons or pure survival.
Q. And as a woman? There are more and more women museum directors, but in the 1990s, there were hardly any.
A. Absolutely! It's been a little bit the same... When I studied at the university in the late 70s and early 80s, there were very few women and I was the only person of color. Now it's totally different. In fact, in the meetings with all the members of CIMAM there are already more women than men. It's a very good thing but we also have to think about our male colleagues, how we articulate ourselves to be aware of all of us.