Christine Y. Kim

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Christine Y. Kim is an American curator of contemporary art. She is currently Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Before her appointment at LACMA in 2009, she was Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York.[1] She is best known for her exhibitions of and publications on artists of color, diasporic and marginalized discourses, and 21st-century technology and artistic practices.

Life and education[]

Career[]

Kim’s first museum job after graduate school was in the bookstore at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1999. She was quickly hired as a writer in the Education Department, contributing research and texts on artists and works of art in the permanent collection for The American Century where she met other aspiring young curators and writers focusing on works of art by artists of color such as Franklin Sirmans and Lisa Dent.

In 2000, following the appointments of Lowery Stokes Sims and Thelma Golden as Director and Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, respectively, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Kim was hired as Curatorial Assistant. Through her promotions to Assistant Curator and to Associate Curator during her eight-year tenure, Kim organized numerous exhibitions: the groundbreaking Freestyle (2000),[2] popularizing the term “post-black art” and featuring work by artists such as Mark Bradford, Jennie C. Jones, Dave McKenzie, and Julie Mehretu; Black Belt (2003) an exhibition that featured works by Black and, for the first time in the museum’s history, Asian American artists such as Sanford Biggers, Patty Chang, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Arthur Jafa, and Glenn Kaino, and their musing on cross cultural connections and hybridities growing out of 1970s popular culture; and Henry Taylor: Sis and Bra (2007),[3] the artist’s first solo museum exhibition.

By 2007, Kim was working between New York and Los Angeles. She presented exhibitions such as Kehinde Wiley: World Stage Lagos - Dakar (2008)[4] and Flow (2008),[5] referred to as the “African ‘F’ show” featuring work by artists from Africa such as Latifa Echakhch, Nicholas Hlobo, Otobong Nkanga, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Studio Museum, while co-founding the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) a non-profit committed to temporary, site-specific public art exhibitions with curator Shamim M. Momin.

In late 2009, Kim was hired as Associate Curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) by CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan whose aim was to create a contemporary art team led by curators of color to better reflect the community, county and country. To date, Kim has organized numerous exhibitions and projects, most notably James Turell: A Retrospective (2013-14),[6] co-curated with Govan, which won first place for the Best Monographic Museum Exhibition in the U.S. by the International Art Critics Association (AICA-USA) in 2014, and was presented concurrent with major solo presentations of Turrell’s work at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH); and Julie Mehretu (2019-2021)[7] a critically-acclaimed mid-career survey curated with Rujeko Hockley, Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, which traveled to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. In 2019, Kim was promoted to full curator at LACMA.

In addition to an institutional career of over two decades, Kim has co-founded and partnered with local, national and international organizations, as a champion of social and racial justice, representation, and equity in exhibitions, acquisitions and museological practices, as well as community alliances and engagement. In 2017, she co-founded GYOPO, a diasporic Korean contemporary art and culture non-profit with Commonwealth & Council founder Young Chung, Human Resources co-founder Eric Kim, Equitable Vitrines (EV) Executive Director and co-founder Ellie Lee, artist Yong Soon Min, artist Jennifer Moon and artist Gala Porras-Kim, among others, committed to free public programming, community allyship and BIPOC solidarity. In collaboration with For Freedoms, LACMA, GYOPO, and Stop DiscriminAsian (SDA), Kim pioneered a series of groundbreaking virtual panel discussions in 2020 Racism is a Public Health Issue: Addressing Prejudices Against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 including historian Jeff Chang and artist Anicka Yi; Examining the Impact of Police Brutality on Black Communities including filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Rashid Johnson; and Essentially Forgotten: How COVID-19 Impacts Frontline Workers including Dolores Huerta and Chon Noriega during the pandemic. Kim’s ongoing work extends into mentorship, lectures, advocacy and education.

List of Exhibitions[]

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Curator, 2019 – present[]

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Associate Curator, 2010 – 2021[]

The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Associate Curator, 2004 – 08[]

The Studio Museum in Harlem, Assistant Curator, 2002 – 2004[]

The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Curatorial Assistant, 2000 – 2002[]

  • Africaine, 2001
  • Freestyle,* 2001
  • John Bankston: Capture and Escape of Mr. M, Ch. 1, 2001
  • Harlem Postcards (ongoing seasonal project), 2002 – 2007

Guest-Curated Exhibitions[]

Select Publications[]

  • “1966 and the Light in LA.” Unexpected Light: Works by Young-Il Ahn, Baik Art (2017)
  • “Kori Newkirk.” Issue Magazine (Issue2 2015)
  • “Deposing Dualities in Prospect 3.” Prospect 3: Notes for Now, Prestel, NY (2014)
  • “Wangechi Mutu: The Pin-ups.” Wangechi Mutu: A Shady Promise, Damiani Press (2008)
  • “Mark Bradford: it’s tricky to rock a rhyme to rock a rhyme that’s right on time.” Zing Magazine (Winter 2005)
  • “Long Ago and Far Away.” Eduardo Sarabia exhibition catalogue, I-20, New York (2003)
  • “Kehinde Wiley Faux Real.” Interview, Issue 7 (Fall 2003), 54-67
  • “Colorblind? Luis Gispert, Rico Gatson, Glenn Kaino, Julie Mehretu, Yunhee Min, Kori Newkirk, Nadine Robinson, Eduardo Sarabia, Eric Wesley.” V Magazine (March/April 2003)
  • “Faux Real: Interview with Kehinde Wiley.” Black Romantic exhibition catalogue, ed. Thelma Golden, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2002)
  • “Candice Breitz: Third Degree Burn.” Candice Breitz exhibition catalogue, Centrum fϋr Gegensartskunst, Linz, Austria (2001)
  • “Intervention with Odili Donald Odita.” Odili Donald Odita exhibition catalogue, Florence Lynch, New York (2001)
  • “(212) Staging Illusion.” (212): Diti Almog, Wayne Gonzales, Odili Donald Odita, Lisa Ruyter, and John Tremblay exhibition catalogue (2000)
  • “From Dual to Plural: Five Korean American Artists.” The Korean War in American Art & Culture: Fifty Years Later exhibition catalogue, East Hampton: Keener’s East End Litho (2000), 31-35

Select Archived Public Talks[]

  • December, 2011 Art Salon Art Public, Art Basel Miami Beach: Christine Y Kim in Conversation with Theaster Gates and Glenn Kaino

References[]

  1. ^ Abrams, Amy. "Christine Y. Kim". Art in America. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
  2. ^ Cotter, Holland (2001-05-11). "ART REVIEW; A Full Studio Museum Show Starts With 28 Young Artists and a Shoehorn (Published 2001)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  3. ^ "Henry Taylor". The Studio Museum in Harlem. 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  4. ^ Smith, Roberta (2008-09-04). "A Hot Conceptualist Finds the Secret of Skin (Published 2008)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  5. ^ Cotter, Holland (2008-04-04). "Out of Africa, Whatever Africa May Be (Published 2008)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  6. ^ Knight, Christopher (2013-05-28). "Art review: The light through James Turrell's eyes". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2021-03-11.
  7. ^ "Julie Mehretu's New LACMA Survey Reveals an Artist at the Peak of Her Power—But Also One Unusually Eager to Share the Credit". Artnet News. 2019-11-11. Retrieved 2021-03-11.

External links[]

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