The Taipei Dangdai art fair is expanding its leadership team.
Organizers behind the event, which was launched in January, have appointed Robin Peckham as its co-director, artnet has learned. Peckham will work alongside Magnus Renfrew, who co-founded the fair in early 2018.
“Robin has an exceptional reputation as one of the leading cultural innovators of his generation,” Renfrew said in a statement. “Robin will be based in Taipei and will be well-served by his fluency in Mandarin in broadening and deepening our relationships with stakeholders and the cultural community.”
Peckham, an up-and-comer in Asian art circles, has worn many professional hats, working as a writer, editor, curator, and gallerist in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei, where he’s currently based.
After attending Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, he served as director of Boers-Li Gallery in Beijing. In 2011, he founded Saamlung gallery in Hong Kong, which remained open for two years. In 2014, Peckham co-curated the “Art Post-Internet” exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing with Karen Archey. That same year, he signed on as editor-in-chief of LEAP, a Chinese–English journal on art, a position he held until 2018.
He will have a hand in curating Taipei Dangdai’s public programming and will assist Renfrew in developing the fair, a representative confirmed.
97 galleries are scheduled to participate in the second edition of the fair, which is slated to run from January 17–19 next year at the Nangang Exhibition Center in the Nangang District of Taipei.
Renfrew, an influential figures in the Asian art world, will remain in his position as co-director of the fair. The entrepreneur founded Art Hong Kong in 2008, then made a big splash by selling the established fair to Art Basel in 2011.
Renfrew is also the co-founder of ART SG, a Singapore fair. After being postponed a year, the first edition of that event is scheduled to run from October 30 through November 1, 2020.