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Strengthening connections between Australia and Indonesia

With Aaron Seeto at the helm, Jakarta’s Museum MACAN is facilitating new conversations with Australia-based artists.

7 Jun 2023

Celina Lei

Visual Arts

Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan, ‘Here, There and Everywhere (In-habit: Project Another Country)’, 2018. Installation view of ‘Cosmopolis $1.5: Enlarged Intelligence,’ Mao Jihong Arts Foundation in collaboration with Centre Pompidou, Chengdu, China, 2018. Image: Supplied.

When it opened in 2017, Museum MACAN (Modern and Contemporary Art) in Nusantara was the first museum of modern and contemporary art in Indonesia. Its inaugural Director, Aaron Seeto, is an experienced arts leader in the Asia Pacific. Among other roles, he was previously Director of Sydney’s 4A Centre for Contemporary Art, Curatorial Manager of Asian and Pacific Art at QAGOMA (Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art) and leader of the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT8).

Museum MACAN was founded by prominent Indonesian businessman and art collector Haryanto Adikoesoemo, whose daughter, Fenessa Adikoesoemo chairs the Museum MACAN Foundation. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Fenessa was also a fellow at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC.

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Celina Lei

Celina Lei is an arts writer and editor at ArtsHub. She acquired her M.A in Art, Law and Business in New York with a B.A. in Art History and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne. She has previously worked across global art hubs in Beijing, Hong Kong and New York in both the commercial art sector and art criticism. She took part in drafting NAVA’s revised Code of Practice - Art Fairs and was the project manager of ArtsHub’s diverse writers initiative, Amplify Collective. Celina is based in Naarm/Melbourne.