Philip Tinari


Philip Tinari is a notable writer, critic, art curator, and expert in Chinese contemporary art. Based in Beijing since 2001, Tinari is currently director and CEO of the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.

Education

Tinari holds a bachelor's degree from Duke and a Master's from Harvard. Fluent in Chinese, he was a Fulbright fellow at Peking University, and is currently completing a Ph.D. at Oxford.

Career

Prior to arriving at UCCA in 2011, Tinari worked as China representative for Art Basel, and lecturer in art criticism at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is a contributing editor at Artforum, having launched the magazine's Chinese edition in 2008. In 2009 he launched , "the international art magazine of contemporary China," and edited the magazine until 2012. He has written and lectured extensively on contemporary art in China, in particular on the artist Ai Weiwei.
Tinari joined UCCA as director in 2011, and assumed the concurrent post of CEO in 2017. At UCCA, Tinari oversees an exhibition program devoted to established and emerging artists both Chinese and international, aimed at UCCA's annual public of approximately a million visitors. Under his leadership the institution has built its international reputation and successfully transitioned from the ownership of its founders Guy and Myriam Ullens to that of a council of Chinese and international patrons. In 2018 he led the museum through the opening of a second location, UCCA Dune, in Beidaihe, China.
Tinari serves on advisory boards including the Guggenheim Asian Art Council and the gallery committee at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Exhibitions

Since arriving at UCCA in late 2011, Tinari has mounted exhibitions including , , , , , , , , and Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters, I-XVIII. Outside of UCCA, in 2014 he curated the Focus: China section of The Armory Show in New York. Together with Alexandra Munroe and Hou Hanru, in 2017 he co-curated “” which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, before subsequently touring to the Guggenheim Bilbao and SFMOMA.