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CAI GUO-QIANG’s Ignition of Chaos in Nature (2012) exhibited as part of “Sky Ladder” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Photo by Joshua White. Courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Last week, West Kowloon’s new museum for visual culture M+ welcomed Lesley Ma as its new ink art curator. Ma, who took up the new position on October 8, will serve part-time in developing exhibitions and building the museum’s ink art collection and public programming.
A Harvard alum with a degree in history and science, Ma also has a masters in museum studies from New York University. From 2005–09 she was Project Director for Cai Guo-Qiang and coordinated the eminent Chinese artist’s celebrated “Sky Ladder” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2012.
In addition to her new duties at M+, Ma is currently pursuing a PhD in art history, theory, and criticism—focusing on abstract painting in postwar Taiwan—at University of California, San Diego. She is also a contributing writer for ArtAsiaPacific, Art Collection + Design, Chuan Art Journal, and Asia Art Archive-America.
Ma, who was raised in Taiwan, has been based in Hong Kong since earlier this year. Her appointment complements M+’s mandate to comprise a diverse team, with half coming from Hong Kong and the rest from elsewhere. A moving image curator is yet to be selected for the HKD 4.7 billion museum, which will open in 2017.