Michelle Yun Appointed Curator at Asia Society Museum

On August 9, Michelle Yun was appointed curator of modern and contemporary art at the Asia Society Museum in New York.

Yun, who specializes in Chinese contemporary art and diaspora artists, was most recently curator at the Hunter College Art Galleries in New York. There she headed such exhibitions as “Patti Smith. 9.11: Babelogue” (2011), which featured a series of works on paper by the seminal New York poet-artist, and “Notations: The Cage Effect Today” (2012), a group exhibition exploring the effects of John Cage on various international artists.

At the Asia Society Museum, Yun will plan and execute the institution’s upcoming modern and contemporary exhibitions, as well as manage and build on its contemporary art collection, which was established in 2003. “I’m delighted to have the possibility to develop the museum’s collection to complement our stellar holdings of traditional Asian Art," wrote Yun in an emailed statement to ArtAsiaPacific.

Prior to her position at Hunter College, Yun was a consulting curator at the Museum of China Cultural Arts (MoCCA), Beijing, where she organized the exhibitions “East/West: Visually Speaking” (2010) at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, University of Louisiana, and “Liao Zhenwu: Monument” (2010) at the Today Art Museum, Beijing, which also traveled to Chengdu and Shenzhen. As an advisor, she was also instrumental in developing a contemporary Asian Art curriculum for the graduate program at Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology.

“I’m very thrilled to join the Asia Society Museum staff and look forward to focusing my efforts on supporting our upcoming roster of modern and contemporary exhibitions. Our programming includes an exciting and diverse group of projects that I will be managing, among them, ‘Iran Modern,’ a comprehensive survey of [works from] a dynamic period in Iran between the 1950s to the 1970s,” Yun told AAP. This exhibition, which will be guest curated by art scholars Fereshteh Daftari and Layla S. Diba, is part of a lineup that will also include the newest installment of the “In Focus” series. Following the presentation of U-Ram Choe’s kinetic sculptures in 2011, this year’s “In Focus” will feature Korean-Canadian multimedia artist Tim Lee.

“Michelle’s appointment builds on Asia Society’s long history of pioneering scholarship on and engagement with Asian and Asian American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries,” stated Asia Society Museum director Melissa Chiu, in a press release for the announcement. “Yun’s curatorial and scholarly expertise will be an asset as we continue to advance our work in the field, and continue to develop new resources and manage new acquisitions.”