Art Insight #8: Lars Nittve

Q. The distinguished lineup of museum staff and impressively large exhibition space of M+ has already been attracting attention years before the slated opening date. What is your top priority ahead of the opening?

There are quite a few very different things that we are simultaneously moving forward with, but our greatest priority lies in creating a team with a capacity to inexhaustibly present ideas. We have brought together a team composed of 22 curators and highly competent staff members. Their ideas have provided us with a strong foundation to build the collection, which is the museum’s heart. We are now adding greater momentum to hit the slated museum opening date in 2018. We are also closely courting our audience, and as part of that, we have been engaging the Hong Kong public with projects, exhibitions, and lectures on contemporary art and visual culture.

Q. “All the World’s Futures” was the title of this Biennale. Based on your keen foresight, what thoughts do you have on the future, and what does that future mean to you?

The future is obviously an extension of the present. I am currently committed to firmly establishing M+, and I have every faith that it will be a new marker for art in Asia. The intention of my colleagues and I is to create an art museum that Asia has not seen before, which in turn will uprate the role of art museums. I see a bright future ahead. As we all know, society is changing rapidly. In fact, so rapidly that language is not developing fast enough or sufficiently enough to keep up with the changes, so the role of art, particularly visual art, is becoming ever more important to fill that gap. Artists are finding original ways, pioneering means to capture moments that words have failed to signify. I am confident that these are the things that will guide us forward, into the future.

Lars Nittve was born in Stockholm in 1953. He obtained M.A. at Stockholm University after studying at the Stockholm School of Economics. From 1986 Nittve was appointed Chief Curator at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where he curated high-profile exhibitions on Walter De Maria and Wassily Kandinsky. From 1990, he served as the founding director of the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmö, Sweden, where he organized shows on Sherry Levine, Andreas Gursky, and Susan Rothenberg. In 1995, Nittve was appointed Director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. Recognized for his outstanding talents, he was named the first Director of Tate Modern in 1998, which opened in 2000 to the anticipation of the art world. He left the London museum a year after its successful debut to return to the Moderna Museet as Director, where he served for nine years. In 2011, Lars Nittve was appointed the Executive Director of M+, Hong Kong’s new innovative museum for visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District, where he is currently in charge of a variety of programs. The M+ is slated to open in 2018.