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Michelle Feng (冯潇) is Peking Art Associates’ Head Researcher for initiatives between academic institutions in the UK and China and art consulting projects. Michelle Feng has Masters in Art History from the University of Warwick with distinction. Ms Feng has worked intensively in the art world in London, both from market and institutional vantage points. In the former, Ms Feng has held gallery roles for Butchoff’s Antiques and latterly Thomas Coulborn & Son. In both positions she was responsible for Chinese client relationships, both solidifying existing and facilitating new ones, and undertook business development with Chinese museums and art institutions, including project bidding and negotiating. Ms Feng also has experience participating at BADA and Masterpiece Art Fairs, receiving collectors from mainland China in their art acquisitions. Institutionally, Ms Feng has held voluntary positions at the Arts Council England, supporting artists’ programmes, and Tate Britain where she worked in the Tate Archive. Further, Ms Feng has worked at Bain & Company in Shanghai, focusing on Chinese market study and strategy localisation for international companies. Xiao Feng complements PAA’s team with a socio-political and cultural knowledge of China.

Academically, one of Ms Feng’s areas of interest is the 18th century Chinoiserie movement in France and her Masters’ dissertation focused on The Collection of Chinese Prints at The Royal Library, la Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris in the early 1700’s. Ms Feng’s other academic interest lies in the communication between East and West in historical time and present, and she is attentive to both the spirit of traditional Chinese culture and avant-grade perceptions embedded in Chinese masters during the Republic of China Period, (中华民国), 1912 – 1949. The creation of a hybrid of Eastern and Western styles at that time, by luminaries such as Fu Baoshi and Zhang Daqian, were reflective of a worldly-wise attitude towards art and a willingness to modify inherited traditions through the incorporation of foreign painting methods. Xiao Feng is particularly intrigued by the origins of this mature, cosmopolitan cultural spirit, its resurgence in recent decades, and how it may be applied both philosophically and practically to our academic projects between China and the United Kingdom today.

Ms Feng speaks fluent Mandarin, English and French.