International Advisors
- Alexandra Munroe
- David Stuart Elliott
- Dr. Eugene Tan
- Nanjo Fumio
- Nigel Hurst
- Rirkrit Tiravanija
- Sunjung Kim
Alexandra Munroe
Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts
Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., is Samsung Senior Curator, Asian Art, and Senior Advisor, Global Arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. A pioneering authority on modern and contemporary Asian art and transnational art studies, she has led the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Initiative since its founding in 2006 while also working on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum Project and the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. She convenes the museum’s biannual Asian Art Council, a curatorial think tank, and heads The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative. As senior advisor, global arts, she helps to guide the foundation’s intellectual and institutional agendas for expanding its purview to study, acquire, and exhibit art from beyond the Western world.
Raised in Japan, Munroe is former vice president of Japan Society, New York, and former director of its museum. She holds a BA from Sophia University, Tokyo, an MA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a Ph.D. in history from New York University, where her research was in modern East Asian intellectual history. She serves on the advisory boards of Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; LEAP, Beijing; Jnanapravaha Mumbai; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; and UCCA, Beijing. She is a trustee of the Aspen Music Festival and School; the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and the United States-Japan Foundation; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.
David Stuart Elliott
David Stuart Elliott (born 29 April 1949) is a British-born art gallery and museum curator and writer about modern and contemporary art
Elliott worked as a regional art and exhibitions officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain, from 1973 to 1976 after which he served as director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford from 1976 to 1996.
In 1995, he co-curated for the Hayward Gallery, London a large traveling exhibition ‘Art and Power” exploring the relationship of art with the totalitarian regimes in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. His catalogue essays for this were gathered together and republished in ‘History Today’. He was then Director of the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm from 1996 to 2001.
From 1998 to 2004, he was President of CIMAM [the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art].
Between 2001 and 2006, Elliott was the first director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large privately endowed museum devoted to contemporary – particularly Asian – art, architecture and design.
During 2007 he was the first Director of Istanbul Modern.
From 2008 to 2010, he was Artistic Director for the 17th Biennale of Sydney,
From 2011 to 2012 he was Artistic Director of the 1st Kiev International Biennial of Contemporary Art entitled ‘The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art’.
From 2013 to 2014 he was Artistic Director of the IV Moscow Biennale of Young Art ‘A TIME FOR DREAMS’.
From 2015 to 2016 he was Artistic Director of the 56th October Salon in Belgrade entitled ‘The Pleasure of Love.’
Dr. Eugene Tan
Director of National Gallery Singapore
Dr Tan held various positions in the arts, including Director of Exhibitions for Osage Gallery, Director of Contemporary Art at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art – Singapore, as well as Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. He has curated various exhibitions including the Singapore Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005) and the inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006). Thematic exhibitions he has curated include “Of Human Scale and Beyond: Experience and Transcendence” (2012), “The Burden of Representation: Abstraction in Asia Today” (2010), “Coffee, Cigarettes and Pad Thai: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia” (2008) and “Always Here but Not Always Present: Art in a Senseless World” (2008), as well as solo exhibitions by Charwei Tsai (2012), Lee Mingwei (2010) and Jompet (2010). He is co-author of the publication “Contemporary Art in Singapore” (2007) and has contributed writings to exhibition catalogues and publications by NUS Press, Hatje Cantz and Phaidon, as well as art journals such as Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, Broadsheet, C-Arts, Contemporary, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Modern Painters and Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. He has also presented at conferences and symposia internationally, including Australia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan and United Kingdom.
Dr Tan graduated from Queen Mary College, University of London with a Bachelor of Science (2nd Upper Class Hons) in Economics and Politics and a Masters of Arts (Distinction) in Post- War and Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art – London. He received his PhD in Art History from the University of Manchester.
Nanjo Fumio
Nanjo Fumio was appointed Director of the Mori Art Museum in November 2006.
Nanjo served as the Museum’s first Deputy Director, from April 2002 until October 2006. Prior to that he organized numerous exhibitions as an officer of the Japan Foundation (1978-1986), as the Director of ICA Nagoya (1986-1990), and as the founder and Director of Nanjo and Associates (1990-2002). His main achievements include: commissioner of the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1997); commissioner of the Taipei Biennale (1998); jury member of the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London (1998); co-curator of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (1999); member of the selection committee of the Sydney Biennale (2000); specialist for the Japan Pavilion at EXPO 2000 in Hanover; artistic co-director of the Yokohama Triennale (2001); jury member of the Golden Lion Prize, Venice Biennale (2005); artistic director, Singapore Biennale(2006).
Nanjo has also curated numerous public art and corporate art projects. Nanjo holds various positions on public and private boards and committees including Vice-Presidency of the Association International des Critiques d ‘Art (AICA) and Membership of the Board of the Comite International des Muses d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (IMAM). He is also involved in the selection committees of several art awards and artist-in-residence programs.
Born in 1949 in Tokyo, Nanjo received his Bachelors of Arts in Economics and Aesthetics from Keio University.
Nigel Hurst
Nigel Hurst is Chief Executive of the Saatchi Gallery in London. He graduated from Goldsmith’s College, London University in 1986 and since then has curated numerous international exhibitions. The Saatchi Gallery was founded in 1985 with the aim of bringing contemporary art to as wide an audience as possible and make it accessible. He joined the Gallery as a curator in 1995, working on Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the National Galerie at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. More recent exhibitions have focused on Asian contemporary art including The Revolution Continues: New Art from China (2008), Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East (2009), The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today (2010), The Silk Road in collaboration with the City of Lille, France (2011), Korean Eye (2012) and Hong Kong Eye (2013). Recent touring exhibitions also include USA Today and Newspeak: British Art Now at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (2008 and 2010) and Saatchi Gallery in Adelaide: British Art Now at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2011) and Hong Kong Eye 2013.
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Rirkrit Tiravanija is a contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiang Mai. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work.
Tiravanija was the co-curator of the Station Utopia project at the 2003 Venice Biennale together with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Molly Nesbit. In 1998, he co-founded a collaborative educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation with Thai artist Kamin Lerdchaiprasert, located in the northern part of Thailand, near the village of Sanpathong. The project combines contemporary art interventions and agricultural traditional values; the six-hectare land is intended to be cultivated as an open space or community free from ownership, and residents and artists are welcomed to use a plot of land as a laboratory for development‚ cultivating rice, building sustainable houses, or channeling solar power.
Tiravanija is also part of a collective alternative space called Gallery VER located in Bangkok. He maintains his primary residence and studio in Chiang Mai.
In 2009, Tiravanija was a member of a think tank established to define the model and architecture of the Guggenheim Urdaibai, an annex for the existing Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Sunjung Kim
Sunjung Kim is the President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, who has played a pivotal role in linking Korean contemporary art and the international art world.
Kim received her B.F.A. from Ewha Womans University and her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art, U.S.A. In 2005, she was the commissioner of the Korean Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale. Also in 2005 she founded SAMUSO: Space for Contemporary Art, a curatorial office based in Seoul. Kim was the Artistic Director of the 6th Seoul International Media Art Biennale – Media City Seoul 2010.
Kim was a Co-Artistic Director of ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale (Korea, 2012), for which her research explored the multiple layers of histories and narratives that enclose possibilities of intimacy, autonomy and anonymity within the urban sphere.
In 2013 she was ranked at number 94 in ArtReview Magazine’s annual Power 100