BARBICAN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR TO HEAD HONG KONG’S WEST KOWLOON CULTURAL DISTRICT

Graham Sheffield, artistic director of London’s Barbican, is to become chief executive of Hong Kong’s $2.8 billion West Kowloon Cultural District, according to Bloomberg.

Sheffield, who has run the Barbican’s programming since 1995, starts his new job in mid-August, a Hong Kong government statement said. He will manage artistic choices and operations of the project and report to a board, the statement said.

“There are very few artistic opportunities anywhere in the world which could have tempted me away from the Barbican,” Sheffield said in an e-mailed Barbican release. “I could not resist the unprecedented opportunity to create a new world arts city leader in cosmopolitan, vibrant Hong Kong.”

Sheffield is widely credited for the high standards set by the Barbican, Europe’s largest multiarts center, which sold 1.2 million tickets and saw attendance surge 13 percent in the year ended March 31. During that period, the Barbican received twenty-nine million dollars in subsidy from the City of London Corporation, and raised another twenty-three million dollars through ticket sales, trading, venue hire, and other means.

The Barbican did not indicate how soon and by whom Sheffield would be replaced.

The West Kowloon Cultural District occupies Hong Kong’s prime waterfront property and will feature a new modern-art museum, concert halls, and theaters.