In a major signal that the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) is committed to staying in China (despite months of speculation to the contrary), it was announced today that the Beijing-based editor and curator Philip Tinari will take on the job of Director of UCCA in December, replacing Jérôme Sans, who has helmed the institution since February 2008.

Tinari comes to UCCA with enormous experience and credibility within the Chinese contemporary art world, which will be a valuable counterweight to his lack of institutional experience. A graduate of Duke University with an MA in East Asian studies from Harvard, Tinari has been a fixture of the Chinese scene for the best part of ten years, working variously as a curator, editor, writer, and translator. He is Art Basel's man in China, and is currently the editor of LEAP – a bilingual contemporary culture magazine published by China's Modern Media group. He previously edited Artforum's China edition.

Recent talk that Baron Guy and Miriam Ullens planned to close the UCCA was triggered by their decision to sell a major part of their collection of Chinese contemporary art earlier this year at Sotheby's Hong Kong, and was kicked along by the news that another major tranche would be going on the block next month. The theory ran that the Ullens were getting out of Chinese contemporary art and that their institution would follow. Guy Ullens had made no secret of his desire to find a Chinese partner to take on the running of the Center in the long term. A hoped-for collaboration with China's privately-owned Minsheng Bank foundered after just one outing (an acclaimed exhibition by painter Liu Xiaodong last year) with Minsheng later announcing their intention to establish their own museum space in Beijing.

Tinari's appointment suggests that the Ullens have now accepted they are in for the long haul, while also acknowledging the need to give the institution a more local flavour. At the same time various Chinese journalists have been told that money from the sale of the Ullens collection will be ploughed back into the running costs of the UCCA.

The Ullens Center has achieved a great deal under the direction of Jérôme Sans, who was brought in to run it after a series of early missteps at the institution. It was opened with great fanfare in November 2007 under the directorship of respected curator Fei Dawei, but a few months later four out of the five original senior staff members had left, including Fei himself, leaving a heavy cloud over the project.

Sans — who was earlier the co-founder of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, as well as director of programs at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England — has focussed on building both the local and international profile of the UCCA with an ambitious program of exhibitions, an impressive lecture program and and money-spinning sidelines including a popular restaurant and a well-trafficked shop.

The Center was originally envisaged to be largely focussed on Chinese contemporary art, but as time went on locals began muttering that its approach was "too foreign."  However, as Philip Tinari observed to ARTINFO China today, as soon as the UCCA's future was in doubt its critics began to appreciate what they might be losing. Tinari is obviously hoping to build on that sentiment. He made it clear that a key part of his strategy would be building up the in-house curatorial team.

Sans, for his part, struck a buoyant note. "It's time to move on," he told ARTINFO China today after breaking the news of his departure to his staff. "It's time to reinvent myself again. I feel I've completed my mission, completed the first step, and now its time to hand over the keys." Still, Sans says he intends to keep in touch with both the Ullens themselves and the UCCA in the future and to continue to have "one foot in the Chinese art world."

Meanwhile, Tinari flagged that the Ullens planned to release a long term plan for the institution in the coming weeks.