Watching Yana Peel wax lyrical about one of her many projects, it’s easy to feel as if you’ve entered into a téte-à-téte with a Bloomberg News host just off camera. For anyone engaged in the arts in Hong Kong today, this indelible presence is doubtless a familiar one. Although she moved to the city just five years ago from London, her activities and contacts extend into seemingly every corner of influence in the local art scene. She is co-chair with William Lim of influential public arts space Para/Site; a key adviser to the Asia Art Archive; and of Intelligence Squared, the London-based international debate platform that invariably delivers one of the highlights of Hong Kong Art Week.
Born in Moscow, Peel immigrated with her family to Toronto at the age of five. She studied Russian Literature at McGill, and went on to do post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics, which segued into a seven-year career at Goldman Sachs, where she worked in emerging markets and hedge funds. During her time there, Peel first became active in the arts as a patron to London’s cutting-edge contemporary space, the Serpentine Gallery. She says that it was there she saw an opportunity to connect her two spheres of activity – the trading floor at Goldman and the rarified art circles of places like the Serpentine.
“I recognised that London, though it has these amazing arts institutions built up over the 20th century, still had a nascent community in terms of philanthropy and cultural support compared to America, which was very much at the forefront,” she remembers. “Sitting on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs, I thought there was an interesting gap, in terms of being able to harness the resources of this community and bring them closer to the arts.”
From there her advocacy for arts support quickly turned into a full-time endeavor. Peel left banking in 2002 and with close friend Candida Gertler founded Outset Contemporary Art Fund, a philanthropic organisation designed to introduce new art to cash-strapped public institutions. “Outset’s support of public institutions has made them stronger and helped them be at the cutting edge,” Obrist adds. “And in some ways, that’s what she’s now doing for Hong Kong.”
In 2008, Peel moved to Hong Kong with her husband Steven, a veteran investor who was brought to the city by global private equity firm TPG Capital to help run its regional operations. Someone with Peel’s ambitions couldn’t have arrived in Hong Kong at a better time. Five years ago the city was just beginning to emerge as the region’s leading international art market, and plans for major government investment in culture were finally starting to take shape.
Peel is quick to celebrate the achievements Hong Kong has made in positioning itself as Asia’s leading art market, through successes such as Art HK (which was bought out last year by global art fair leader Art Basel) and the establishment of leading international galleries in the city, along with the record-setting regional revenue hauls of auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s. But she also acknowledges that much is still missing from the city’s cultural ecosystem.
“In order to have a truly healthy cultural community, one needs robust public institutions and spaces to help balance the commercial forces. As well as strong schools, street level communities, cafes and spaces for artists to live and work,” she says. “I’ve been thrilled to see some of this happening rapidly in Sheung Wan, Chai Wan and our warehouse districts, but we also need to be patient.”
To read the full interview and find out more about what Yana Peel’s hopes for Hong Kong’s art future, pick up the May 2013 issue of Hong Kong Tatler, available on newsstands now. Get your subscription here.
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