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AWT TALKS 2025｜Directors Conversation: Museums in the 21st Century
Doryun Chong × Susanne Gaensheimer × Manuel Segade × Philip Tinari
How can major museums respond to rapidly changing economic, political, social, and technological conditions?
Launched in 2025, Art Week Tokyo’s Directors Conversation brings together leaders of major museums from around the world to discuss the present and future of the museum from the perspective of their locally embedded practices.
Moderated by Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator of M+, Hong Kong, the conversation features Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Manuel Segade, Director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Philip Tinari, Director and Chief Executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art.
Their discussion ranges from diversifying collections and programs to social media and audiences, the possibilities and contradictions of the museum as a democratic public space, the role of contemporary art across different political contexts, and the question of what audiences want from museums—explored in part through Picasso and Guernica.
DORYUN CHONG
MODERATOR
Doryun Chong is Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong. Chong oversees all curatorial activities and programs at M+, including collections, exhibitions, learning and public programs, publications, and digital initiatives across the museum’s three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art. He has curated and overseen critically acclaimed exhibitions for M+, including “Noguchi for Danh Vo: Counterpoint” (2018), “Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now” (2022, with Mika Yoshitake), and “Picasso for Asia: A Conversation” (2025, with François Dareau). He also helped organize and supervise the five editions of Hong Kong’s participation in the Venice Biennale from 2015 to 2024. Prior to joining M+, Chong worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. He curated several landmark exhibitions during that time, including “Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde” (2012) at MoMA and “Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis” (2008) and “House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective” (2005) at the Walker.
SUSANNE GAENSHEIMER
SPEAKER
Susanne Gaensheimer is Director of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. From 2009 to 2017 she was Director of Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, where she founded the branch MMK 2 in 2014 and concurrently served as Curator of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and 2013. Previously, she was Director of Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster (1999–2001) and head of the modern and contemporary art collection at Lenbachhaus Munich (2002–08). Her recent projects in Düsseldorf include solo exhibitions of Julie Mehretu (2025), Etel Adnan (2023), Isaac Julien (2023), and Lygia Pape (2022) alongside an ongoing transformation of the collection with a focus on internationality, diversity, and new narratives. In 2023 she launched the K21 Global Art Award, supporting young international contemporary artists. Since 2016, she has also been an honorary professor at Goethe University Frankfurt. Gaensheimer is the editor and author of numerous publications.
マMANUEL SEGADE
SPEAKER
Manuel Segade is Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. From 2013 to 2023 he was Director of the Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (CA2M Museum) in the Madrid municipality of Móstoles, where he won the CIMAM Outstanding Museum Practice Award in 2021. From 2007 to 2009 he was Chief Curator of the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, where he curated monographic exhibitions for artists including Susan Philipsz (2007) and Carme Nogueira (2008) and thematic surveys including “A Little History of Photography” (2009) and “Familiar Feelings: On the Boston Group” (2009). Segade began his practice as an independent curator in 2003 and has organized more than 60 curatorial projects in the two decades since, including the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017. He holds a PhD from the University of Leeds and is the author and editor of numerous books.
PHILIP TINARI
SPEAKER
Philip Tinari is Director and Chief Executive of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Since joining UCCA in 2011 he has led its growth and transformation from a founder-owned private establishment into China’s premier institution of modern and contemporary art, operating across a constellation of four locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Beidaihe, and Yixing. His program has featured major Chinese and international artists including Cao Fei, William Kentridge, Luc Tuymans, and Xu Bing alongside emerging talents and historical figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. Tinari cocurated the landmark exhibition “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World” (2017) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and organized the inaugural Diriyah Biennale (2021) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
