Melissa Chiu

Melissa Chiu is a New York museum director, curator and author. She is currently the Museum Director of Asia Society, as well as its Vice President of Global Art Programs,^[1] responsible for programming its Park Avenue museum and future museum facilities currently under construction in Hong Kong^[2] and Houston.^[3] Both of these centers are scheduled to open in 2012. She is the author of several books on Chinese contemporary art, and is one of the world's leading authorities on modern and contemporary Asian art.^[4]

She is a board member of the Association of Art Museum Directors,^[1] the American Association of Museums,^[5] and the Museum Association of New York.^[6] She is also on the founding Advisory committee for the USC American Academy in China and has participated in the advisory committees for the Gwangju and Shanghai Biennales.

Education

Born in Darwin, Northern Territory,^[7] Australia, in 1972,^[8] Chiu was educated in Sydney, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Western Sydney and then an MA (Arts Administration) at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. She later completed a PhD at the University of Western Sydney focusing on Chinese contemporary art in the diaspora.^[9]

Museums

Chiu worked as an independent curator for several years before, in 1996, joining with a group of Asian Australian artists, performers, filmmakers and writers to establish Gallery 4A, a nonprofit contemporary art center devoted to promoting dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region. Chiu was founding Director of Gallery 4A,^[10] later renamed the Asia-Australia Arts Centre. In 2001 she oversaw the Center's transition to a two-story city owned heritage building in Sydney’s Chinatown.^[11]

Chiu was appointed Asia Society's Museum Director in 2004 after serving as the curator of contemporary Asian and Asian American art—the first curatorial post of its kind in an American museum. She has since initiated a number of initiatives at the Asia Society Museum, including the launch of a contemporary art collection to complement the museum's Rockefeller Collection of traditional Asian art.^[1]

Chiu has been a prolific curator, organizing over thirty international exhibitions (largely, but not exclusively) focused on the art and artists of Asia.^[9] Her major curatorial credits include Zhang Huan: Altered States (2006)^[4] and Art and China's Revolution (2008) ^[4] with Zheng Shengtian, one of the first historical appraisals of Chinese art from the 1950s through 1970s and most recently Nobody's Fool: Yoshitomo Nara (2010) with Miwako Tezuka.^[12] She was awarded a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship in 2004.^[13]

Publications

She has also published widely, in art magazines and journals, and has authored several books, including Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (2007), published by Charta and Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know (2008), published by AW Asia.^[8] Her latest books include Contemporary Asian Art with Benjamin Genocchio, published by Thames & Hudson and Monacelli Press,^[14] and an edited anthology, Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader, published by MIT Press.^[15]

Other Work

In 2010, Chiu joined the Sunday Arts television show on PBS WNET to conduct a series of interviews with cultural leaders. Interview subjects have included William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, Yoko Ono, Tan Dun, Chuck Close and Antony Gormley.^[16][17]

In addition to her museum work, Chiu is a regular speaker at international conferences and symposia and has delivered lectures at such institutions as Harvard University, Columbia University, Yale University and the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, among others.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} http://asiasociety.org/about/people/officers
2. ^ http://asiasociety.org/centers/hong-kong/about-hong-kong-center
3. ^ http://asiasociety.org/centers/texas/asia-society-texas-center-capital-campaign-new-regional-center
4. ^ ^{a b c} http://www.artzinechina.com/display_vol_aid647_en.html
5. ^ http://www.aam-us.org/aboutaam/governance/board.cfm
6. ^ http://manyonline.org/about-2/board-staff
7. ^ http://184.106.231.42/ideas/5088
8. ^ ^{a b} http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/29502/profile-melissa-chiu
9. ^ ^{a b} http://bigthink.com/melissachiu
10. ^ http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/chronicler-of-the-asianaustralian-experience-20090929-gazd.html?skin=text-only
11. ^ http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?page=1&sy=smh&kw=Melissa+Chiu&pb=all_ffx&dt=selectRange&dr=10years&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=10&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=news001027_0051_4653
12. ^ http://asiasociety.org/calendars/yoshitomo-nara-nobodys-fool
13. ^ http://artlog.com/people/15607-melissa-chiu
14. ^ http://www.thamesandhudson.com/media/images/Contemporary_AsianArt_PR_23187.pdf
15. ^ http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12467
16. ^ http://asiasociety.org/media/press-releases/asia-societys-melissa-chiu-joins-sundayarts-team-conduct-depth-interviews-artis
17. ^ http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/?x=9&y=17&s=Melissa+Chiu

External Links

• "New York Times": Rising From Obscurity, Asian Art Reflects New York Success
• "New York Times": Long-Delayed Show of Buddhist Art From Pakistan Is to Open

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