Prominent Curator Leaves China for New Nam June Paik Museum

HONG KONG—Tobias Berger, one of the most prominent art world personalities in China, will be moving on in a few weeks. In mid-August, he wraps up a stint as executive director and curator at Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong’s edgy contemporary art institution, to take up the post of chief curator at the Nam June Paik Art Center near Seoul in September.

“The Nam June Paik Art Center is a newly built museum of more than 5,500 square meters. To become founding curator for a major museum in Asia is a chance you can get only once in your life,” he said. His first show at the new space, which opens in October, will go on view in February 2009.

The ambitious new institution, created in honor of the late Korean multimedia artist, will showcase not only works from Paik’s estate but also new works from international artists. Berger, who was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, and educated at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and the De Appel Curatorial Training Program in Amsterdam, says the center was “looking for a European curator working in Asia. They want European, American, and Asian contemporary art.”

Berger’s passions include multimedia contemporary art and “Fluxus in the 1960s, which Nam June Paik was part of,” he says. His work as a curator has been seen at the Guangzhou, Auckland, Christchurch, and Sao Paolo biennials. Before moving to Hong Kong, he was director of New Zealand’s top independent art institution, Auckland’s ARTSPACE, and artistic director of the 9th Baltic Triennial of International Art in Vilnus, Lithuania.

He joined Para/Site in the spring of 2005 and quickly helped to raise its profile as an exhibitor of cutting-edge art and creative expression. He will continue to be an adviser to Para/Site and says that, in spirit, he’s not completely leaving southern China.