On January 12, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary announced the appointment of Philip Tinari as its new deputy director and head of art, following the departure of Pi Li, who will leave the institution in February at the end of his three-year term.

An influential expert in Chinese contemporary art, American-born Tinari is a curator, critic, and former director and chief executive of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), where he served for 14 years. During his tenure, he spearheaded the institution’s expansion from its flagship Beijing location to a network of museums across China, with venues in Beidaihe, Shanghai, and Yixing. He is recognized for organizing blockbuster exhibitions of historical masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Andy Warhol, as well as major showcases of leading Chinese and global contemporary artists including William Kentridge, Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Maurizio Cattelan, and Anicka Yi, among others.

In addition to his work at UCCA, Tinari co-curated the 2017 exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World” at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and in 2021 curated the inaugural Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale in Saudi Arabia. He was founding editor of LEAP, China’s first international contemporary art magazine, from 2009 to 2012. With degrees in East Asian studies from Harvard University and literature and history from Duke University, Tinari studied Chinese as a Fulbright scholar at Tsinghua University and has lived and worked in Beijing since 2006.

In Tai Kwun’s press release, Tinari expressed his enthusiasm for “deepening and expanding [the institution’s] impact with diverse communities and stakeholders, and raising its profile to the international art community.” 

Timothy Calnin, director of Tai Kwun, stated that he looks forward to Tinari bringing “refreshed perspectives and insights” to audiences in Hong Kong and abroad, and is eager to collaborate with him on amplifying the institution’s “distinctive role as a cultural anchor of the region.”

Aisha Traub Chan is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.