By Patricia Cohen
New York Times
Melissa Chiu, the Australian-born, veteran director of Asia Society Museum in New York, has been chosen to lead the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, a Smithsonian division that is trying to regain its footing after a series of bruising fights over finances, leadership and direction.
Chiu, who has broad international experience overseeing the society’s 11 centers and affiliates in the United States and Asia, has been praised for her scholarship and vision. Although her specialty, contemporary Chinese art, is not a focus of the Hirshhorn, new media, video and photography, which she has championed at the Asia Society, are part of the Hirshhorn’s mission as a museum of modern art.
“I am very excited,” Chiu said. “It’s an amazing institution.”
With her international background, she said, she brings a “fresh perspective” to the Hirshhorn and plans to look at “what a museum can be in the 21st century.”
The museum’s previous director, Richard Koshalek, left a year ago after the museum was unable to raise sufficient funds to finance the centerpiece of his four-year tenure - a temporary 15-story inflatable bubble called the Seasonal Inflatable Structure in the museum’s inner courtyard. The trustees were sharply split over continuing to back the project, and several members resigned.
Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for history, art and culture, officially canceled plans for the bubble last July as the remaining trustees and the acting director, Kerry Brougher, pledged to return to the museum’s core mission: its collection and exhibitions.
Kurin and four trustees were part of the search committee that selected Chiu.
The move from New York to Washington will involve a large jump in responsibility. Asia Society’s museum, with 8,000 square feet of exhibition space (plus two smaller galleries in its Houston and Hong Kong branches), has a few hundred pieces in its collection. At the Hirshhorn, celebrating its 40th anniversary this fall, Chiu will oversee about 12,000 artworks and 60,000 square feet of exhibition space plus the 1.3-acre sculpture garden. The museum, which has 51 employees and drew 645,000 visitors last year, has a budget of $8 million, which does not include the $10 to $12 million in operational support supplied by the Smithsonian.
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