Suhanya Raffel brings vast experience to the role of museum director of the M+ museum for visual culture, which opened in November 2021 in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District and welcomed more than 1.8 million visitors through its doors in less than a year.

Despite the fifth wave of Covid-19 in Hong Kong warranting M+’s closure for nearly four months at the start of 2022, the museum has salvaged its first year with landmark exhibitions by the likes of Nalini Malani and Yayoi Kusama, the launch of its giant LED screen display with Ellen Pau’s The Shape of Light: Healing through the Heart Sutra, and the eagerly anticipated opening of M+ Cinema in June.

M+ also co-presented Angela Su’s acclaimed installation at the Venice Biennale in April in its first international project after its official opening.

Raffel took over the top job in 2019 after joining as executive director in 2016, before which she worked in various curatorial roles for galleries in Australia. From 2013 to 2016 she was the deputy director of the Art Gallery New South Wales in Sydney, overseeing a major expansion project; while from 1994 to 2013 she was curator at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane.

Born in Sri Lanka and raised both there and in Australia, Raffel is also a trustee of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, which furthers the artistic and educational legacy of the great Sri Lankan architect. She was also a member of the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Council from 2009 to 2014.

At M+, she has gone out of her way to expand the reach of the museum’s collection, while also engaging with the local community through programmes of touring exhibitions and schools’ outreach, while also forming partnerships with organisations including Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum and the Sydney Opera House. “There is no other institution of this kind and scale in Asia,” she told Tatler in her November 2021 cover story. “It is time for M+ to pave the way.”