If anyone is capable of setting up a new international art fair in Taiwan, it is Magnus Renfrew. Founder and director of Taipei Dangdai, as the fair is known, Renfrew, 43, has deep experience in Asia.
He first came to Asia in 2006 when he got a job at Pearl Lam’s prestigious Shanghai gallery, and he has been based in Hong Kong since 2007. The following year saw him become the first director of the fair known as Art HK. So successful was that venture that in 2011 Swiss exhibitions group MCH bought a 60 per cent stake and incorporated it into its glossy Art Basel fair portfolio.
Originally from Cambridge, England, Renfrew is the son of two archeologists. Today, with his wife and three small children, he describes Hong Kong as “home”. Asia appeals, he explains, because it taught him that “the western aesthetic is not the only way of looking at the world.”