Life.Culture.Discovery.

This museum director’s adventurous journey from Sri Lanka to Hong Kong

Suhanya Raffel, museum director of M+ in Hong Kong, has a passion for building world-class institutions, and despite identifying as ‘many things’, is a Hongkonger at heart

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Suhanya Raffel, museum director of M+ in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, photographed in M+. Photo: Jocelyn Tam

Published: 3:10pm, 19 Mar 2025

I am an island person. I was born in 1962 in Sri Lanka, an island; then I moved to Australia, an island; and then to the UK, another island; and now I’m in Hong Kong, which is full of islands. Islands have always been open to exchanges and sea routes and people coming and going. They have rich cultures with influences from other places. I am one of those people.

Party house

My father was a doctor and my mother was a musician. My uncle was the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka. My mother played the viola, piano and clarinet and began a youth orchestra, which I was a part of. I played the cello. I have two brothers and we are all trained musicians. In the early 1960s, my parents commissioned an eminent architect, Geoffrey Bawa, to build a beautiful house. It was a courtyard house with spaces that flowed in and out, because in the tropics you can do that. They became friends with Geoffrey during the commission and he designed it so that soirées could take place.

Nurtured nature

Baby Suhanya Raffel with brother Adam at their home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1964. Photo: courtesy Suhanya Raffel

We moved into the house in 1964. There was a lot of music and musicians and chamber concerts at home. It was a house full of art, music, literature, conversation and quite international, with people coming through town. I grew up surrounded by that kind of ambience and I think it influenced my choices in terms of what I would spend my life doing.

Culture shock down under

I went to Ladies’ College in Colombo until 1975 and then we migrated to Australia. Many people left because of the civil war and wanting to give their children a better future. My dad worked at a medical practice in Sydney. It was a big cultural shift. I did a degree in art history at the University of Sydney. The history we were taught was European and American art history, it wasn’t even Australian.