Is having two bosses really the way forward for the West Kowloon Cultural District?

It might be unrealistic to expect to find in one CEO all the skill sets required to run a complicated project like the cultural district. In theory, a chief artistic officer would help strengthen the hub’s cultural brand

Enid Tsui

Published: 8:15am, 24 Oct 2020

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After the Xiqu Centre, will chief artistic officer (CAO) become the next nudge-nudge-wink-wink name adopted by the West Kowloon Cultural District?

The name of the Chinese opera theatre sounds like “private parts” in Cantonese, while cao, in Mandarin, is often used in less polite circles as a short way of saying “go forth and multiply”.

Jokes aside, the idea of a CAO is being floated now that the very serious business of finding a replacement for Duncan Pescod, the ousted chief executive of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA), is under way.

At least two authority board members have told me that there is support for the idea of splitting the CEO job into two. One, a chief in charge of sorting out the dastardly-difficult construction projects and commercial tenders. The other, a chief in charge of the content behind the concept of the West Kowloon Cultural District: a CAO overseeing all the performing arts venues; M+, the museum of visual culture; and the Hong Kong Palace Museum, with its focus on the treasures from Beijing’s Forbidden City.

The reason behind this thinking is that it is simply unrealistic to expect to find in one person all the skill sets required for such a complicated and troubled project. They have tried CEOs with an arts background. For example, Graham Sheffield, the CEO appointed in 2010, was the former artistic director of the Barbican Centre in Britain.

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He stayed for five months. Pescod, a career civil servant and former director of housing in Hong Kong, was seen as a safe pair of hands when he took over in 2015. Even though he didn’t know about the arts, it was felt that someone with his background was best suited for the urgent business of actually getting the district built.

Under his watch, the M+ Pavilion, Freespace, the Art Park and the Xiqu Centre have opened, and M+, after many years of delay, is finally nearly ready for the art to be moved in. However, Pescod’s removal nearly a year before his contract finishes reveals the deep rift between the executive team and the board, with the latter becoming convinced that a technocrat doesn’t necessarily have the right management skills for WKCDA.

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A quick glance at the authority’s organisational chart reveals just how daunting the job is. The general manager of the commercial division, the chief financial officer, the chief corporate services officer, the general counsel, the chief projects officer, the executive director of performing arts, the director of M+ and the director of the Hong Kong Palace Museum all report directly to the CEO.

It may be too much. As it had been for the director of Tai Kwun (the former Central Police Station).

Under the watch of West Kowloon Cultural District Authority chief Duncan Pescod, the M+ Pavilion, Freespace, the Art Park and the Xiqu Centre have opened. Photo: Winson Wong

In April, we saw an example of top-job sharing when Timothy Calnin, the Tai Kwun director, split his job up so that he is now in charge only of the centre’s cultural programming. The part of his old job overseeing the commercial and operational aspects was taken up by Chin Chin Teoh, the former co-director of the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile, who moved to Tai Kwun as director of The Jockey Club CPS Limited.

It is tempting to think that the same can apply to Pescod’s job. After all, it may be beneficial for a cultural district to have a CAO (or whatever the arts director is called) who can help it develop an identity, so it won’t just be seen as a massive property development project housing a group of disparate cultural venues.

But the arguments against a CAO seem very strong, too. The West Kowloon Cultural District and Tai Kwun are miles apart in terms of scale and complexity. Also, adding another layer to an already labyrinthine organisational chart seems likely to create more problems for a project plagued by accusations of miscommunication (which were part of the board’s criticism of Pescod’s team).

Also, the current arrangement of the M+ and performing arts heads having a direct line to the top boss seems to be providing the artistic teams with the confidence to come up with exciting and creative programmes.

A CAO could take that away. And, while a strong cultural brand is what the West Kowloon Cultural District should have, its current offerings are showing the benefits of having a fairly hands-off CEO who let the natural diversity of content spring forth.

So, what should happen? We need a CEO who is better at communicating with the board and who is able to prove that the district can be built and run on the available resources, while allowing the artistic teams to continue to have the creative freedoms they currently enjoy.

Enid Tsui is the Post’s arts editor

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