On June 26 the Asia Society in New York announced Yasufumi Nakamori, senior curator of international art at London’s Tate Modern, as its next director. Nagamori will assume his new position in August. She fills a role that has been vacant since last June, when Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe left to become executive director of the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester County, New York.
“I want to bring energy and energy to the museum,” Nakamori said The New York Times, he plans to create new works from contemporary artists, bring local communities into the fold, and focus on programs that explore Asian influence on other continents. „It is important that we fill in the gaps in Asian art history,” he continued. „I want the Asia Society to be an interlocutor and a catalyst.”
The institution, one of America’s top museums dedicated to exhibiting and collecting artworks of Asian heritage, sank earlier this year. Controversy After two images of Islamic art depicting the Prophet Muhammad were blurred out on its website. The Asia Society argued that they were accidentally hidden and then made them visible. „I don’t think the images should have been blurred,” Nakamori said times. „What happened was a lack of clear and stable leadership, a lack of internal consensus.”
Nakamori embarked on Tate in 2018, specifically traveling to six European institutions for an exhibition by South African artist Janelle Muholi. He previously chaired the Department of Photography and New Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Nakamori has additionally taught graduate seminars at Rice University and is the author of several articles and four volumes. Katsura: Portraying Modernism in Japanese Architecture (2010) He holds a master’s degree in art history from Hunter College, City University of New York and a Ph.D. in the same field from Cornell University. Before 2002, Nakamori enjoyed a successful career as a corporate lawyer.
„In Yasufumi Nakamori, we have found a leader who will guide the Asia Society Museum, the importance of Asian art and artists in visual culture worldwide, as it develops. [its] A catalog of exhibitions, performances and collections,” Emily Rafferty, an Asia Society trustee and search committee trainer, said in a statement.