Exclusive | Hong Kong’s M+ museum head vows she’ll fight off political interference, amid fallout over secret Palace Museum plan

Suhanya Raffel, in first interview since becoming director of future visual culture museum at West Kowloon arts hub, backs a Hong Kong Palace Museum and says she’ll defend M+ curators’ independence and its global outlook

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Suhanya Raffel, head of M+, says she will not allow interference with the work of its curators when the museum of visual culture opens in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District in 2019. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 12:00pm, 8 Feb 2017Updated: 11:30pm, 8 Feb 2017

The new head of M+ has vowed to defend Hong Kong’s future museum of visual culture against political interference amid renewed concern over the governance of the long-delayed West Kowloon Cultural District.

Suhanya Raffel, former deputy director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia, said she would fight off any challenge to the museum’s global outlook or the independence of its curators.

Raffel started her job on November 1 and was soon confronted with the massive fallout from the Hong Kong government’s secret planning for a branch of Beijing’s Palace Museum to be built close to M+ in the waterfront cultural quarter.

The plan, revealed to members of the arts hub’s board and to the public seven weeks after she replaced Lars Nittve as executive director of M+, drew heavy criticism because of the government’s failure to consult the public over it. A director for the Hong Kong Palace Museum has not been named.

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.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Exclusive | Hong Kong’s M+ museum head vows she’ll fight off political interference, amid fallout over secret Palace Museum plan

Exclusive | Hong Kong’s M+ museum head vows she’ll fight off political interference, amid fallout over secret Palace Museum plan