Luning Wang
Founder and author
With diverse experience in the art industry, Luning specialises in creating original editorial and video content on art and culture across different traditional press and Chinese new media channels. Drawing her familiarity with the art market and media landscape in China, she helps international art businesses reach new collectors through creative content solutions and development, while helping clients to access to western art world through editorial, events and private art advisory.
As a columnist of Financial Times China, her column——“Picasso and the Single Girl” which is named after her original blog, reports on the art world and contemporary culture with a personal perspective. Her column on Artnet China focuses on the art market observations and taste of collecting. She is also a regular contributor to Vogue Business, Figaro and Fortune Art magazines. She has around a total of 100,000 followers across key Chinese new media platforms including WeChat, Weibo (China’s Twitter) and RED (China’s Instagram).
A young patron of Tate and Serpentine Galleries. Luning holds a BSc Politics degree from the University of Bristol and MA Contemporary Art degree from Sotheby’s Institute of Art London. She was recognised in Tatler Asia’s Gen T List 2021 for her impact on arts media in China and dedication to arts education through online content and bespoke art education and events programmes for new and aspiring collectors.
Luning’s current and previous projects include international media & development for X Museum (Beijing); content management for the Shanghai edition of the Unique Design group exhibition (2019) and co-organisation of the Continuous Regeneration exhibition in Shanghai, etc.
Picasso and the Single Girl
Encouraged by her friends who said she never failed to crack them up, Luning started writing her thoughts on society, modern life and reality-based stories inspired by her gallery girl experience in London in 2015. She founded “Picasso and the Single Girl”, the official WeChat subscription account in 2016 and started sharing the happenings in the international art world and her insights of western culture to the Mandarin-speaking audience.
“Picasso and the Single Girl”, the name was inspired by the famous book “Sex and the Single Girl” written by the then editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine Helen Gurley Brown in the 1960s. “Picasso” symbolises the art world and its species. “The Single Girl” element is a metaphorical reference to the individuality in the society at large. It also represents a female perspective, discussing relevant issues from human relationships to personal growth. Readers can see a real human being live, work, love and laugh in the cosmopolitan city——this is what sets it apart from other news reporting style media outlets. “Picasso and the Single Girl” cover stories and people from the art and cultural fields and provides insight into the art market and western elite culture to Chinese audiences. Intellectual and witty, together with Luning’s other new media channels including RED, Weibo and Bilibili, its content reaches a community of educated, well-travelled, affluent Chinese.
