Fan Di’an The director of the National Art Museum of China, Fan Di’an is perhaps the only cultural bureaucrat who seems to value a designer haircut and a well-fitting suit. A prominent critic and educator in the 1990s and former vice president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he was once tapped by the Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin to deliver a crash course in modern Western art on the eve of a presidential visit to the Pompidou. Since his appointment to the nation’s premier venue in 2005, Fan has expanded the museum’s program — official shows sponsored by sanctioned ‘‘artists’ associations’’ and, increasingly, corporate-sponsored vanity exhibitions — by collaborating with international-art-world institutions like Art Basel (for which he held a panel and party in the museum’s atrium last September) and the Guggenheim (whose blockbuster ‘‘Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation’’ opened there earlier this month). A member of the city’s Olympic Committee who is widely seen as destined for higher office, he will most likely face the onerous task of legitimizing contemporary art in the eyes of the state. (courtesy www.nytimes.com)