Amid fresh pro-Beijing attacks, Hong Kong arts hub loses another non-Chinese senior director

Alison Friedman has resigned as artistic director of performing arts at the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), four years after her arrival stirred a debate about race in the city’s largest ever cultural project. She may not be replaced.

Friedman, who has spent her entire working life in China, will return to her home country of the US and head the performing arts centre belonging to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after the summer. She says the move is prompted by the need to be close to her ageing parents.

The fluent Mandarin speaker had spent 15 years in Beijing before becoming the WKCD’s first artistic director of the performing arts under the then executive director Louis Yu Kwok-lit.

An email from the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) on Tuesday read: “WKCDA has a strong and professional performing arts team under the leadership of [the] executive director, performing arts to ensure a smooth transition. WKCDA regularly reviews the manpower requirements in light of its operational needs and the development progress of its facilities. The authority will review the functional requirements of the performing arts division before proceeding with the recruitment for the artistic director post.”

Friedman graduated in Chinese language and translation at Brown University in the state of Rhode Island before going to Beijing on a Fulbright fellowship in 2002 to research the development of modern dance in China. She spent a number of years working for Chinese performing arts groups and the composer Tan Dun, before founding a cultural exchange organisation based in Beijing called Ping Pong Production in 2010.

Her departure comes at a time when M+, the museum of visual culture at the WKCD, is under fresh attack from the pro-Beijing camp. The state-owned newspapers Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po have pointed to works in the museum’s collection that could “incite hatred” for China and risk violation of the new National Security Law. They blame “Western-led” management under museum director Suhanya Raffel, an Australian national born in Sri Lanka, for what they deem to be inappropriate inclusion of such works in the museum.