Francesco Bonami's Social Media Response to Criticism of White Male Museum Leadership in China

Francesco Bonami, the Italian curator leading the By Art Matters museum in Hangzhou, recently took to social media to respond to an article by Lisa Movius in the Art Newspaper. The article highlighted the prevalence of white men in top museum positions in China and specifically mentioned Bonami, along with William Smith, Peter Eleey, and Shai Baitel. Movius criticized them for having limited Asian experience, noting that three of them live abroad. In his reply, Bonami argued that the article's judgments were shallow and even claimed to sometimes feel like "a thirty-five-year-old Iranian lesbian." He dismissed the article as "totally inappropriate" and challenged the idea of "whiteness" by discussing cultural attitudes toward aging in Asia.