Notes from Aric Chen, the general and artistic director of Het Nieuwe Instituut

Harald Dunnink, the creator and host of Memberful Design, recently sat down with Aric Chen, the general and artistic director of Het Nieuwe Instituut, for our Memberful Design podcast. Aric shared his journey from studying architecture at Berkeley to becoming a creative leader in China and now leading a young institution with a rich history in the Netherlands.

Our conversation touched upon curating design and architecture at M+, the museum of visual culture in Hong Kong, reverse curating thousands of museums in China, and a sudden “wine and design” lunch with I. M. Pei in New York. Take a look at some of our favorite moments below.

Aric took on a challenge when he became the general and artistic director of Het Nieuwe Instituut. One common question was about the name of the institute itself.

“People have different opinions on the name of Het Nieuwe Instituut, and I think a lot of them are of course valid, but in defense of the name, this idea of newness is embedded in the name and so for me, the new doesn't describe the institute at its time of inception, but rather it describes its permanent state. I think that truly describes the internal culture as well.”

Aric's journey took him from the sprawling cities of Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai to the cozy, creative confines of the Netherlands. With a background in design education at prestigious institutions like Berkeley and Parsons, Aric found the perfect haven for creative exploration and implementation in Het Nieuwe Instituut. Harald asked if its more intimate scale affords Aric even greater freedom to explore and bring his ideas to life:

“I've said this before, and I'll keep saying, that it's a totally unique institution in the world. I really can't think of any other place that has such an amazing collection, but also such a deep-rooted culture and mandate for experimentation that works across disciplines as well as at local, regional, and global levels — and also has the size and resources, and wherewithal to really do something with its potential.

When this opportunity came up, I said, I'd be stupid not to give it a shot. And as you said, I was quite happy in Shanghai. So I think it could only be Het Nieuwe Instituut that could tear me away from Shanghai.”

Aric previously served as the curator of design and architecture at M+, the museum of visual culture in Hong Kong. During our conversation, Aric talked about the difference between building a collection from scratch and overseeing a well-established institution like Het Nieuwe Instituut. He shares his experience shaping the narrative and creating a collection with the purpose of exploring new stories and perspectives from the regions of Hong Kong, China, and East Asia.

Here's Aric on the challenges he's faced in his professional journey:

“They're [Het Nieuwe Instituut and M+] both very exciting, but also challenging in different ways. It was really exciting to be able to help build something from scratch and also to build it in a way that allowed you to explore other narratives. We were building a collection with a very expressed intention of telling different stories. Not just sort of telling, but sometimes even constructing lesser-known narratives within our region in Hong Kong, China, Asia, East Asia, et cetera. But also revisiting well-known global narratives from the vantage point of where we were.

We were always very clear that we weren't a Museum of Asian visual culture. It wasn't about collecting Asian things, but rather visual culture from the perspective of where we were. The project was also so big, I think the budget was over a billion euros in the end. I don't know if that's been officially tossed around yet but anyone can take the public numbers that are out there and just add them up, 65,000 square meters. That becomes a different kind of institution with different sorts of pressures. There's a lot more pressure to do blockbusters and things like that.

Het Nieuwe Instituut is big enough, we have about 120 staff but it's not so big. The funding structures are different as well, I think. M+ was moving much more toward an American model.”

Aric grew up in Taiwan, had an education in the United States, and spent years of his career in Hong Kong and Beijing. All of these different cultural perspectives have shaped his understanding of the world and the stories museums should tell.

Here's his take on the many perspectives he brings to his work:

“As someone whose family background is Chinese via Taiwan, I was born, raised, and educated in the US. So the way you learned these histories and different methodologies you do have to unlearn a little bit. The question of criteria comes up, the criteria that one might use in a museum in New York required revisiting for us in Hong Kong because the stories were different in many cases.”

Aric also talked about the unique phenomenon of “reverse curating” after China's museum boom. With thousands of museums built in the past decade, many are magnificent structures but lack a clear plan for use.

Aric’s research through the curatorial lab at Tongji University aimed to find socially and culturally relevant purposes for these buildings, by starting with the building and reverse-engineering it from a programmatic point of view. Here’s Aric’s take on how curatorial practices can be tailored to the cultural context of China, and how we can unlock the full potential of these buildings:

“The work we were doing at M+ was kind of rethinking different curatorial practices in the context of China. As a curatorial lab, we weren't going to just teach the skills that curators at institutions in the US or Europe or wherever have been taught for decades but rather we wanted to look at the specificities of the cultural condition in China to see what curatorial practices make sense and maybe even how we might evolve new ones.

One of the issues we looked at was the phenomenon of this museum boom in which literally thousands of museums in the past 10+ years have been built now throughout the country and driven by economic, political, bureaucratic, and even architectural agendas, but not so much by curatorial or programmatic ones in many cases.

So you wind up with spectacular buildings but there's no plan for how they'll be used and even when there is a plan, they weren't often designed to accommodate their uses as well as they could. We called it reverse curating.

We were looking at these buildings which will not go away and perhaps shouldn't go away. But we started with the building and then sort of reverse-engineered it from a programmatic point of view to find a socially and culturally relevant purpose for them.”

Aric also talked about his work with Open Architecture on a landmark project called the Sun Tower in Yantai, Shandong province, in mainland China. It was designed to serve as a museum, monument, and landmark all in one and was tasked with being both cultural and cool.

Here’s Aric on what else makes the Sun Tower project unique:

“We were fortunate to be able to work with a project, Open Architecture, which is a very credible architecture studio based in Beijing doing amazing work. They were commissioned to design a kind of museum-slash-monument-slash-landmark in northeast China or Shandong province. And that was the brief, and this was very common: Design something cool for us and make it cultural.

And Open [Architecture] is fantastic and they're very good at giving their projects real social value in general. We were fortunate to be able to work with them on this landmark. It's an incredible building, a very difficult building for exhibitions because there's not a straight line in it. It's kind of a giant concrete volcano rising on the shoreline of the Yellow Sea. Its form is determined by the movement of the sun and also air currents. So it's meant to actually be kind of like a celestial instrument, a vis-a-vis Stonehenge or whatnot.

We were able to work backward with them to develop an initial idea they had of making this a kind of a digital museum, but also a digital and now phenomenological museum that also serves as an education center looking at environmental and other issues.”

Lastly, Aric has explored the idea of the death of manifestos in his stimulating essay. He critiques the conventional manifesto, overflowing with unwavering certainties. Dive into Aric's perspective.

“These certainties [in manifestos] require a kind of unifying logic. My argument against that is that these sorts of totalizing worldviews and arguments just don't work. They're in fact, what has gotten us into the mess that we've got.

The world has too many manifestos, and too many overly certain opinions, and positions. We don't need more of that because the issues we face are much more complex than that. I think that going back and forth with these very dogmatic manifestos is a distraction and in fact, is often more damaging than anything else.”

Feeling inspired by Aric Chen's fascinating journey from working at M+ in Hong Kong to heading up Het Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands? Be sure to check out the full episode of ‘Memberful Design’ — our podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Join us for the ride!

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