Education
Melissa Chiu completed a Bachelor of Arts (Art History and Criticism) at Western Sydney University and then a Master of Arts (Art Admin) at the School of Art and Design, University of New South Wales in Sydney. She holds a PhD from Western Sydney University, focused on Chinese contemporary art in the diaspora titled “Transexperience and Chinese Experimental Art, 1990-2000”- one of the first PhD’s in the field. Later, it was expanded and published as “Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China” (2006). She was awarded a Doctor of Creative Arts honoris causa by Western Sydney University and a Doctor of Arts and Design honoris causa by the University of New South Wales in 2017 and 2022 respectively.
Curatorship
Chiu worked as an independent curator for several years at the beginning of her career. From 1993-1996, she joined the University of Western Sydney as a curator, charged with creating a collection of emerging Australian artists. In this time, she curated a museum exhibition, managed acquisitions, and published a catalogue of the entire collection.
In 1996, Chiu collaborated 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, later renamed and currently known as, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. In 2000 she led the Center’s award, through public tender, of a two-story city owned heritage building in Sydney’s Chinatown, making the institution into one of the few to exist in Australia supported with public and private funding.
Asia Society Museum
(2001 - 2014)
In 2001, Chiu moved to New York to begin her role at the Asia Society Museum as Curator of contemporary Asian and Asian American art. This was the first curatorial post of its kind in an American museum. Her curatorial credits include exhibitions of Chinese-Australian artist Ah Xian and Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (2004), the first major museum exhibition on the subject, accompanied by an exhibition catalogue.
Three years later, Chiu was appointed Director of the Asia Society Museum, New York and took on responsibility for the traditional art holdings of the museum including the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of traditional Asian art. She initiated and commissioned exhibitions that frequently necessitated cultural diplomacy. Some exhibitions were first-time loans to the United States involving complex agreements with foreign Ministries of Culture. During her tenure, Chiu negotiated major exhibitions with the government and museums of India, Pakistan, Myanmar and China.
In 2007, The Arts of Kashmir exhibit brought items from museums in Srinagar, the capital of the region in northwest India.
(New York Times article)
In 2010, the Asia Society presented Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea, the first major show to exhibit art from Vietnam in the U.S. since the Vietnam War. That exhibition included art loans from 10 different Vietnamese museums, a first-time showing in the United States. (New York Times article)
In 2011, the Asia Society presented The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan: Art of Gandhara, which was the first exhibition of Gandharan art in the U.S. since 1960 and drawn from museums in Karachi and Lahore. The exhibition was staged at an all-time low in political relations between Pakistan and the U.S. and the exhibition attracted critical acclaim as much for the exhibition curation as the fact that it happened at all.
(Wall Street Journal article)
In 2013 the Iran Modern exhibit brought together the first major presentation of art made in Iran from the 1950s-1970s, before the 1979 Revolution. For the first time ever, art from private collections in Iran were on loan in the United States. The exhibition also included works on loan from the Museum of Modern Art that had not been exhibited in decades (New York Times article). In 2013 Chiu traveled to Myanmar to negotiate with the Ministry of Culture for loans of art that would focus on art over 15 centuries and on loan from national museums in Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw. This was the first-ever exhibition of art to focus on Burmese art drawn from museum collections in Myanmar (New York Times article). All of these exhibitions were accompanied by major scholarly catalogues.
Sarah Sze: Infinite line
Curating Asian Contemporary Art
Chiu continued to curate exhibitions of living artists while at the Asia Society. Zhang Huan: Altered States (2006) was the artist’s first retrospective as well as the first retrospective of a living artist for the Asia Society. In 2012 Chiu curated Infinite Line, a mid-career solo show for artist Sarah Sze. Chiu also co-curated exhibitions, such as with Zheng Shengtian, the 2008 exhibit Art and China's Revolution, one of the first historical appraisals of Chinese art made after Mao Zedong’s 1949 revolution through the 1970s. In conjunction with Art and China's Revolution, Chiu was awarded a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship. In 2010 Chiu and Miwako Tezuka co-curated the first major solo show of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, Nobody’s Fool, an exhibition that explored the artist’s fascination with music. She also commissioned the exhibition and co-edited the accompanying exhibition catalogue Nam June Paik: Becoming Robot in 2014.
In 2007 Chiu established and launched a contemporary art collection for the Asia Society Museum through a major gift from a single benefactor to establish a collection of video and new media art from Asia. Over 5 years nearly 50 works were acquired for the collection including works by Yang Fudong, Nam June Paik, and Koki Tanaka.
In 2010, Chiu also began her role as Senior Vice President of global arts and cultural programs with the Asia Society Museum. In her capacity as SVP, Chiu led programming for the Asia Society Museum facilities in Houston and Hong Kong. At the new Hong Kong building she initiated and convened the Arts and Museums Summit; US China Museum Directors Forum an international convening of leading museum directors from around the world. The papers from this conference as well as newly commissioned essays were published in “Making a Museum in the 21st Century”.
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington
In 2014, Chiu was named Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, national museum of modern art; a part of the Smithsonian Institution located on the National Mall in Washington D.C. The Hirshhorn Museum showcases modern and contemporary art and has a collection consisting of over 12,000 works by artist such as Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Alma Thomas, de Kooning, Pollock, and Rothko.
Under Chiu’s leadership, the Hirshhorn Museum has focused on its mission to serve as the United States’ national museum of modern and contemporary art along with building its’ international standing through exhibitions, collection initiatives, scholarship, and technology. The attendance of the museum has doubled under her stewardship with nearly one million annual visitors.
Chiu has also initiated a major focus on technology with the creation of the Hirshhorn Eye (hi) in 2018, a ground breaking award winning gallery phone video guide providing visitors with the opportunity to scan artwork with their phones to unlock videos of artists speaking about their artwork. More recently, this video guide has been adapted for use with Hirshhorn books and catalogues so that scans of art works in books provide instant videos of artists. Other initiatives include Studio Hirshhorn that provides artist videos in the lead up to the exhibition about the making of the artwork to provide visitors with insider access to processes.
Major exhibitions since Chiu began her role as director include Surrealist Sculpture, Robert Irwin: All The Rules Will Change, recognized by two New York Times art critics as one of the best exhibitions of 2016, and Shirin Neshat: Facing History, a retrospective of the Iranian film-maker and artist spanning three decades. One of the most successful exhibitions in the history of the Hirshhorn was initiated by her, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors. It attracted nearly 500,000 visitors to the museum—breaking all attendance records for the museum. The exhibition toured to five cities around the country. Other curatorial projects include the commission of Mark Bradford's 40 foot painting and the display of Ai Weiwei’s Trace in 2017, a monumental art work of portraits of prisoners of political conscience made from Lego spanning the entire second floor of the museum, which was also acquired by the museum.
Chiu’s Hirshhorn tenure has included a substantial phased capital project, first, the replacement of the entire span of the Hirshhorn’s facade and under current construction is a new design by artist/architect Hiroshi Sugimoto for the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden to be completed in 2026. The final phase is the revitalization and expansion of the museum building and plaza for which Annabelle Selldorf and SOM have been selected.
Chiu was appointed Artistic Director to co-curate with Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick and Miwako Tezuka, the Hawaii Triennial 2022. She devised the curatorial concept of “Pacific Century” to denote a greater recognition of art in the Asia-Pacific region in a multi-site exhibition across Honolulu. It was accompanied by a 283-page book.
Museum Leadership and Convening
In 2011 Chiu founded the US-China Museum Directors Forum with Orville Schell. The first convening was held in Beijing and brought together American cultural leaders such as Yo-Yo Ma, Meryl Streep, and Joel Cohen in public talks with their Chinese peers. The second Forum brought together museum directors from the United States and China for talks on fostering institutional collaboration and exchange. Chiu served as co-editor of a follow up white paper with recommendations on the future of cross cultural exchange toward a New Phase of U.S.-China Museum Collaborations” (2013). (Asia Society Org)
In 2020, Chiu was appointed as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2024 she was awarded the top AANHPI Leader Award by the National Diversity Council in New York.
Chiu has been a board member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, the American Alliance of Museums, and the Museum Association of New York. She was 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.
Chiu has served on grant and policy advisory committees for the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Pew.
Chiu has been invited to give keynote lectures for numerous conferences, including the Museum Next conference in New York with her lecture “Transition and Transformation: Museums in the 21st Century” 2016 and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand’s annual conference in Canberra with the lecture titled “Performing the Public Sphere: Art in the 21st Century”.