Jacqueline Chao

Curator of Asian Art


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Asian Art

Bio

Jacqueline Chao is Curator of Asian Art at the Crow Collection of Asian Art.

A specialist in Chinese and Buddhist art, she joined the museum from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she taught Asian Art History, and from the Art Institute of Chicago, where she contributed research to the Chinese painting collection.

 

She has organized and curated many exhibitions at the Crow Collection, as well as at Phoenix Art Museum, ASU Art Museum, ASU Institute for Humanities Research, Chicago Artists Coalition, and the University of Toronto Art Centre, in the areas of Chinese painting, Tibetan sculpture, Japanese prints, and contemporary site-specific installation, photography and experimental new media. Her national and international exhibitions have presented works ranging from the historical (“Views of Edo:  Japanese Prints from the Robert Louis Mueller Family Collection”; “The Divine Feminine in Tibetan Esoteric Buddhism”) to the contemporary (“Hidden Nature: Sopheap Pich”; “Landscape Relativities: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney”; “WORK WERQ: Contemporary Asian American Art”) in all medias from established and emerging artists from across Asia and North America. She has authored and edited several essays, books and catalogs on Chinese art and Buddhist art, and has presented her research at Harvard University, University of Hawaii, University of Washington, and at other universities, museums, academic conferences and symposia.

 

As Director of Exhibitions and Residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition, a prominent 40-year-old arts service organization, she managed all of the exhibition and residency programming, including a year-long artist studio residency (consisting of 11 artists) and curatorial and artist incubator (consisting of 24 artists and 4 curators). She served on the founding board of Plural Inc., a non-profit dedicated to advancing equity in the arts through support of Canadian and U.S. ethnocultural and community grounded arts organizations, artists, and arts administrators.

 

She holds an MA and PhD in Chinese Art History from Arizona State University with a dissertation on famed Chinese artist Chen Rong (act. 13th century) and the Chinese dragon ink painting tradition, and a BA in Art History from the University of Toronto.  In 2015 she was profiled as a Chicago arts leader in the inaugural issue of Mandarin Leader publication, which featured Chinese luminaries in the Chicago arts, entrepreneurship, medicine and philanthropic communities.