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Cultural crossroads: Hong Kong, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi

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Dr. Stephanie Rosenthal,&nbsp;Director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, Abu Dhabi Paul Frèches, Managing director of Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum Project, Shanghai Moderator: Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator M+, Hong Kong
As the art world’s center of gravity continues to shift, this panel delves into the evolving landscape of museum practice. Focusing on Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Abu Dhabi as influential art hubs, it explores how diverse histories have shaped new, expansive global arts organizations and their impact on today’s international cultural exchange. Speakers will discuss the opportunities for novel forms of collaboration between institutions fostered by these developments, and how they are paving the way for a more inclusive and dynamic artistic ecosystem worldwide.
Dr. Stephanie Rosenthal is Director of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project. She served until 2022 as the head of the Gropius Bau in Berlin. Before this role, she held prominent curatorial positions at the Hayward Gallery in London and the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In 2016, she assumed the role of Artistic Director for the 20th Biennale of Sydney, and in 2019, she chaired the jury for the 58th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.


Paul Frèches is the representative of Centre Pompidou in China and supervises the cooperation project launched by Pompidou with the West Bund Museum in Shanghai. Paul has 20 years of experience in art and culture as a curator and festival director. He was cultural attaché of the French consulate in Shanghai from 2014 to 2019. Frèches is one of the curators of the survey exhibition ‘China: a new generation of artists’ presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2024. 
Doryun Chong&nbsp;is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong. He was appointed as the inaugural Chief Curator of M+ in 2013. From 2016 to September 2024, he also served as Deputy Director, Curatorial. For over a decade, he has overseen all curatorial activities and programs at M+ across the museum’s three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art, as well as the thematic area of Hong Kong visual culture. Leading up to and following the museum’s grand opening in November 2021, he led the transformative growth of the M+ collection and steered the museum’s curatorial direction to foreground transcultural and transnational narratives of 20th- and 21st-century visual culture. He curated more than 20 exhibitions prior to the museum’s opening, including four editions of Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale. He co-curated with Mika Yoshitake, ‘Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now’, the most comprehensive retrospective of the celebrated Japanese artist to date, which opened to great critical acclaim at M+ in November 2022 and toured to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in 2023 – becoming one of the most visited exhibitions in that museum’s history – and then to Serralves Museum in Porto in 2024. He is a co-curator of ‘Picasso for Asia: A Conversation’, which is co-organized by M+ and Musée national Picasso-Paris and will open at M+ in March 2025. The Art Basel Paris 2024 Conversations program is curated by Pierre-Alexandre Mateos and Charles Teyssou.

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