M Woods Museum appointed Victor Wang artistic director and chief curator

M Woods Museum is an independent, not-for-profit art museum founded in 2014 by collectors Lin Han and Wanwan Lei. Across two museum sites, M Woods 798, housed in a former munitions factory in Beijing’s 798 Art District, and the newly inaugurated M Woods Art Community, located in the city’s historic Dongcheng district, present a year-round programme of exhibitions, performances, music, education, live events and talks that situate contemporary art at the heart of the city and beyond.

Now, the M Woods Museum has hired Victor Wang as its new artistic director and chief curator. Wang will oversee the programming for both the institution’s original location in the capital’s 798 Art District and its new space in the Dongcheng District, which opened to the public in August. Dubbed the M Woods Art Community, the satellite space will also host live music, performances, and screenings and will have a restaurant.

“Recently more museums in China are rethinking what it means to be a global museum. And after a successful collaboration with Tate Modern and the recent expansion with the M Woods Art Community, I look forward to developing new ways of supporting contemporary art in this region”, said Wang.

Prior to joining M Woods, Wang established a successful career as an independent curator. Among his many curatorial projects are exhibitions with contemporary artists such as Haroon Mirza at the Sifang art Museum in Nanjing (2019); Richard Tuttle at M Woods (2019); Michael Dean at the ShanghART Gallery in Shanghai (2018); and Katja Novitskova at Whitechapel Gallery in London (2018). He also curated a number of shows that presented Chinese art in Europe, including Micro-Era (2016) for the Nationalgalerie Berlin and Dangdai Yishu (2019) and Zhongguo 2185 (2017) for London’s Lisson Gallery and Sadie Coles HQ.

Wang is also the founder of the Institute of Asian Performance Art, which aims to deepen the awareness and understanding of the history of early performance art in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. He has lectured on curating and contemporary Chinese art at universities such as Tokyo University of the Arts and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and is currently a visiting lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing.

Photo: Seth Fluker/M Woods.