Delfina Foundation Presents: What is the Role of an Institutional Director Today?
In a time of escalating economic, environmental, and political precarity, how can/should leaders of arts organisations respond? We will hear from 3 directors of institutions with varying histories, programs, and contexts. Each director works across operational modes: regional to global; working with artists, patrons, biennales, and governments on collection-building, public dissemination, writing, education, exhibitions, and more. Together, we will prospect the possibilities and stalemates that institutional directors negotiate.
Speakers:
Renan Laru-an – Artistic Director – SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin
Miwako Tezuka – Art Director, Dib Bangkok
Xiaoyu Weng – Artistic Director, Tanoto Art Foundation
Moderated by:
Wong Binghao (Bing) — Curator, Editor, Writer
Renan Laru-an – Artistic Director – SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin
Renan Laru-an is a theorist and curator. Artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin until recently, founding member of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN) at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum, and founder of DiscLab | Research and Criticism (2012-2015), Renan creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study “insufficient” and “subtracted” images, subjects, and artistic works at the juncture of development and integration projects.
Laru-an has been (co-)curator of the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022); the 6th Singapore Biennale (2019); the 8th OK.Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); and Lucban Assembly, Quezon (2015). He is the curator of Soil-Beings, the Philippine Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2025.
Renan is the editor of the book Writing Presently (PCAN: 2020). Laru-an serves on several advisory committees, including the Istanbul Biennale (2024-2027) and esea contemporary in Manchester. Renan lives in Berlin.
Miwako Tezuka – Art Director, Dib Bangkok
Dr. Miwako Tezuka is the inaugural Director of Dib Bangkok, an international contemporary art museum set to open in late 2025. Before this appointment, she held key leadership roles at several prominent institutions in New York, including Gallery Director of the Japan Society,
Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Asia Society Museum, and Associate Director of Arakawa and Madeline Gins’s Reversible Destiny Foundation.
Dr. Tezuka has curated numerous exhibitions, working with renowned artists such as Chen Chieh-jen, Robert Indiana, Kimsooja, Maya Lin, Mariko Mori, Yoshitomo Nara, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Yang Fudong, among others. She served as Associate Curator of the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022, which featured works by 46 artists and collectives from across Asia and the Pacific region.
Her scholarly writings have been published in exhibition catalogs and books by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; and the Setagaya Museum of Art, Tokyo, among others.
Dr. Tezuka earned her PhD in postwar Japanese art history from Columbia University in New York. She is also the co-founder of PoNJA-GenKon (Post-1945 Japanese Art Discussion Group/Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai), a global online network of more than 250 scholars and curators of postwar Japanese art, established in 2003.
Xiaoyu Weng – Artistic Director, Tanoto Art Foundation
Based in New York, Xiaoyu Weng is inaugural Artistic Director of the Tanoto Art Foundation, a Singapore-based not-for-profit foundation. From 2021-2023, she was Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art department at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto, Canada. Previously, she served as Associate Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York, where she curated exhibitions including Tales of Our Time (2016–17) and One Hand Clapping (2018), exploring the responses of Chinese artists to globalization. Weng also curated the fifth Ural Industrial Biennial in 2018–19 in Yekaterinburg, and from 2010 to 2015, she held the position of director and curator of Asia Programs at Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and San Francisco.
Wong Binghao (Bing) — Curator, Editor, Writer
Wong Binghao (Bing) is a writer, editor, and curator currently based in Singapore. They are the editorial and creative director of 5G Bing, an internet grimoire.