Suhanya Raffel

Day 1: Changing from the Inside: How should we Govern Ourselves?

Suhanya Raffel.Photo Winnie Yeung @ Visual Voices. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong.jpg
Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong, China. Photo: Winnie Yeung @ Visual Voices. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong

Perspective
Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong

M+: to see is to believe

The opening of a new museum of scale, M+ in Hong Kong, offers an opportunity to reflect on, and share with professional colleagues, a range of issues that include the establishing of a museum voice that captures the vision for a community through to understanding what it means to negotiate with key stakeholders to bring the museum to the public. Over the last 6 years my focus has been on delivering and sustaining an institution while facing a range of challenges that include pandemic, social unrest, supply chain interruptions, travel restrictions, managing local and global expectations in the face of ensuring curatorial integrity and excellence as the base benchmark of the museums work. Relevance, resilience and negotiated positions are embedded in the success of M+, as we welcomed over 1 million people over a period of 4 months attendance. Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million people, used to welcome over 50 million people in a year, is currently a city without any border open to the world. At the time of preparing for this CIMAM panel which considers an introspective idea, of changing the institution from inside, opening M+ brings a crucible of ideas and intentions that has been profoundly shaped by this particular time.

BIOGRAPHY:

Suhanya Raffel was appointed Director of M+ in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong in 2016. The museum opened to the public in November 2021.

Previously, she was Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Sydney (2013–16), and has held many senior curatorial positions, including Deputy Director of curatorial and collection development from 2010 and Acting Director in 2012 at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (1994–2013). In 2009–14, she was a member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and in 2010–15 served on the boards of the Australia-China Council, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra, Griffith University Asia Institute, Brisbane (2010–15) and LendLease Public Art Advisory Committee (2014–16).

In 2020, she was awarded France’s Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is the 2022 Sydney University Alumni Achievement Awardee for Cultural Contribution. She has been on the Board of CIMAM since 2016, and since 2021 has also been a member of the Bizot Group, as well as a Trustee of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the Lunuganga Trust, Sri Lanka (1994 –).