Valentine Willie, a lawyer by training who spent his career promoting contemporary Southeast Asian art as a curator and galleriest, died on June 9 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was 71. The news was reported by the Malaysian website The Star.
Willie was born in Sabah, a state on the norther part of the island of Borneo, in 1954. He studied law at University College London in the ‘70s. In a profile published in Nikkei Asia days before his death, Willie reminisced about finding refuge from the cold London winters in the city’s free art museums. “The National Gallery was empty, pretty much; nobody taking selfies for sure. I found a comfortable chair, and I would sit and do my homework. . . . Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael all there. Imagine, for somebody like me.”
Willie moved back to his home country in 1978, where he practiced law for 20 years, focusing on the corporate and banking sectors. He collected art (eventually amassing a collection of some 4,000 paintings, sculptures, textiles, and ceramics) and organized exhibitions while continuing to work as a lawyer into the mid-1990s.
In 1996, Willie and Mee-Seen Loong co-founded Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA) in Ampang, just east of Kuala Lumpur. (Loong was a long-time Sotheby’s employee who served as managing director and vice chairman, until leaving in 2018 to be the director of INKstudio, a gallery based in Beijing and Hong Kong.) VWFA’s first show, on view for two weeks in August 1996, was titled “Of Migrants and Rubber Trees” and featured drawings and installations by the Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong; the last, “Salamat Po!,” featured works by puppeteers Iwan Effendi and Ria Papermoon.
In a collection of tributes published by Options, a Malaysian lifestyle publication, Papermoon remembered Willie’s skills at facilitating connections among Southeast Asian artists. “Besides opening doors, he opened our eyes to understanding ourselves more—as Southeast Asian artists and also by learning from fellow artists in the region,” she said. In the same article, the director and CEO of the National Gallery of Singapore, Eugene Tan, said of Willie’s legacy: His work changed what was possible for this region, but what I will miss most is his humour and passion for art, which came across through all of his interactions.”
VWFA eventually opened gallery spaces in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines; the galleries organized an average of 14 shows per year, according to VWFA’s website. VWFA closed in 2013. For the past decade-plus, Willie focused on advising collectors interested in Southeast Asian art.
For five years, until 2020, Willie was the founding creative director of Ilham Gallery, a modern and contemporary art gallery in Kuala Lumpur. “Valentine was a force of nature, who through his VWFA galleries, left an indelible impression on the visual arts scenes in Malaysia and Southeast Asia,” the gallery posted on Instagram.
At the time of his death, Willie was the executive director of KRA Group, a public affairs consultancy based in Kuala Lumpur. Ceritalah, a platform founded by Karim Raslan, also the founder of KRA Group, referred to Willie as “an adroit mentor and warm host” whose “leadership, wisdom, and generosity touched all who had the privilege of working with him.”
