Melissa Chiu To Curate 2021 Honolulu Biennial

On October 15, the Honolulu Biennial Foundation (HBF) announced Melissa Chiu as head curator for the third edition of the Honolulu Biennial.

Chiu currently serves as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Prior to this, Chiu was museum director and senior vice president of global art programs at Asia Society, New York. From 1996 to 2001, she was founding director of Gallery 4A, now the 4A Center of Contemporary Asian Art, in Sydney. She holds a PhD from the University of Western Sydney, where she completed her thesis on contemporary diasporic Chinese art titled Transexperience and Chinese Experimental Art, 1990-2000, later expanded and published as a book, Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China (2006).

HBF executive director and co-founder Katherine Ann Leilani Tuider decided to bring Chiu on board for her “significant insight, scholarship and passion,” adding, “Dr. Chiu is a key figure in building the global dialogue around contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific region, and we look forward to the conversations and connections she will advance for the Honolulu Biennial in 2021.”

Chiu remarked: “I am thrilled to participate in the Honolulu Biennial . . . As a relative newcomer, the Honolulu Biennial allows us to look at all of the curatorial possibilities that such an exhibition presents. I’m looking forward to exploring this as a curatorial model.”

The upcoming Honolulu Biennial is slated to run from February to April 2021.

Michael Rasnic is an editorial intern of ArtAsiaPacific.

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