Aric Chen is the former lead curator for design and architecture at Hong Kong’s M+ museumThe Zaha Hadid Foundation has named American architecture and design curator and writer Aric Chen as its new director. Since 2021, Chen has been the general and artistic director of the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture and design. Prior to this he was a professor and founding director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai. Aric Chen has been named as the new director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation He was also curatorial director of Beijing Design Week and, between 2012 and 2018, oversaw the creation of a design and architecture collection at the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Chen said: “It’s a huge honour to be building on the forward-looking legacy of Zaha Hadid, and the great work the Foundation has already done.  “I look forward to seeing what new directions we can chart, expanding the understanding of Zaha’s work while furthering her desire to support new voices, and creating a voice of our own with a boundarylessness that I hope would make Zaha proud.” The foundation’s chair Brian Clarke said Chen will bring “a wealth of experience from institutions and projects he has directed all over the world.  “We have asked him to bring Zaha’s energy to both a UK and global audience and he has enthusiastically embraced that challenge,” he added. The Zaha Hadid Foundation was founded by Zaha Hadid in 2013 and says its primary purpose is to preserve, study and exhibit Hadid’s work, much of which is in its collection. It has had a contentious relationship with the practice which Hadid founded, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), which is required to pay the foundation 6% of its annual net income in order to continue to use the late architect’s name. In January, the High Court ruled that ZHA must continue paying the royalties, which have generated £21.4m for the foundation since 2018, after the practice had complained that they limited its ability to operate competitively. ZHA and the foundation were also involved in a protracted conflict over Hadid’s estate, which was settled in 2020. Hadid died in 2016 at the age of 65.