Valentine Willie, Visionary Advocate of Southeast Asian Contemporary Art, Dies at 71
Valentine Willie, a Malaysia-based curator and gallerist who championed contemporary Southeast Asian art, died in Kuala Lumpur on June 9 at age 71, according to The Star. Born in Sabah in 1954, he studied law at University College London in the 1970s, returned to Malaysia in 1978, and practiced corporate and banking law for about 20 years while building an art collection that grew to roughly 4,000 works. In 1996 he co-founded Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) with Mee-Seen Loong; the gallery later expanded to Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, mounted an average of 14 shows per year, and closed in 2013. Willie later advised collectors and served as founding creative director of Kuala Lumpur’s Ilham Gallery for five years until 2020, and at the time of his death he was executive director of KRA Group.
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This story was covered in Museums Under Fire, Galleries on the Brink