Hong Kong arts hub exodus: amid fresh delays, key executives leaving West Kowloon project
- Five key executives will leave the authority in charge of the long-overdue West Kowloon Cultural District by autumn 2019
- The Box theatre was to open in April but won’t be ready until June, while the opening of M+, the museum of visual culture, may be postponed until 2021
Several key executives are about to leave the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority as it faces further delays to the opening of two arts venues.
Staff members and advisers to the authority have told the Post they worry that, the longer the delays, the more people will leave out of frustration. The first venues at the arts hub should have opened nine years ago but only one has opened so far.
The openings of The Box at Freespace – a black box theatre – and the M+ museum of visual culture have been eagerly anticipated. However, The Box failed to open as scheduled in April, and M+, whose planned 2017 opening has already been put back twice, may not open until 2021.
The Post has confirmed that between now and autumn 2019, five executives will depart because they are not renewing their contracts: chief technology officer Emily Chan, development director Julian Marland, commercial director Christian Wright, head of technical development Paul Hennig and, as previously reported, the executive director in charge of performance arts, Louis Yu Kwok-lit.
In a statement in response to questions from the Post, the authority said it “has a robust human resources management and succession plan in place to ensure a smooth transition whenever there is staff movement”. Duncan Pescod, the authority’s director, declined to comment on the departures when asked about them in Venice, Italy, where he attended the M+ museum’s international launch party.