Christine Y. Kim is an American

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

of contemporary art. She is currently the Britton Family Curator-at-Large at

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

. Prior to this post, Kim held the position of Curator of Contemporary Art at the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

(LACMA). Before her appointment at LACMA in 2009, she was Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem in New York. She is best known for her exhibitions of and publications on artists of color, diasporic and

marginalized Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the Euro ...

discourses, and 21st-century technology and artistic practices. In 2021, ''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American art magazine, based in New York City. It covers visual arts from ancient to contemporary times. It is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. ''ARTnews'' has a readership of 180,000 in 124 co ...

'' described her as "one of the most closely watched curators in the U.S."

Early life

Kim, a

Korean American Korean Americans () are Americans of full or partial Korean ethnic descent. While the broader term Overseas Korean in America () may refer to all ethnic Koreans residing in the United States, the specific designation of Korean American impli ...

, was born in

Newport Beach Newport Beach is a coastal city of about 85,000 in southern Orange County, California, United States. Located about southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Newport Beach is known for its sandy beaches. The city's harbor once supported maritime indu ...

and raised in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Her parents, Bill S. Kim and Myung Soon "Mary" Kim, emigrated from Korea in the 1960s. Her father is the founder of Kizan International, Inc./Louis Raphael, while her mother, Mary, was a community leader who co-founded the Korean American Community Foundation of San Francisco and received a Korean Presidential Award for her contributions. She attended

Connecticut College Connecticut College (Conn) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. Originally chartered as Thames College, it was founded in 1911 as the state's only women's colle ...

, where she studied

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

. While there, she became close friends with future fashion designer

Peter Som Peter Som (born 1970) is a Chinese American fashion designer. He was creative director for Bill Blass and creative consultant for Tommy Hilfiger, where he designed the women’s wear collection, prior to founding his eponymous label. Born and r ...

. In 1993, she moved to New York City, where she began exploring contemporary art and briefly played

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

in a punk band.

Career

Kim's first museum job after graduate school was in the bookstore at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

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 Lowery Stokes Sims (born 1949) is an American art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art. She is known for her expertise in the work of African, African American, Latinx, Native and Asian American artists such as Wifredo Lam, Fritz ...

and

Thelma Golden Thelma Golden (born September 22, 1965) is an American art curator, who is the Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, United States. She is noted as one of the originators of the term post-blackness. From 20 ...

as Director and deputy director for Exhibitions and Programs, respectively, at the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

, Kim was hired as a curatorial assistant and later promoted to assistant curator and associate curator. Kim organized the exhibition ''

Freestyle Freestyle may refer to: Brands * Reebok Freestyle, a women's athletic shoe * Ford Freestyle, an SUV automobile * Coca-Cola Freestyle, a vending machine * Abbott FreeStyle, a blood glucose monitor by Abbott Laboritories Media * '' FreeStyle'', ...

'' (2000) popularizing the term " post-black art" and featuring work by artists such as

Mark Bradford Mark Bradford (born November 20, 1961) is an American visual artist. Bradford was born, lives, and works in Los Angeles and studied at the California Institute of the Arts. Recognized for his collaged painting works, which have been shown intern ...

, Jennie C. Jones, Dave McKenzie, and Julie Mehretu. In 2003, she organized ''Black Belt'', 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 Patty Chang (born February 3, 1972, in San Leandro, California)"About." ''Patty Chang.'' Accessed March 10, 2018. http://www.pattychang.com/about/ is an American performance artist and film director living and working in Los Angeles, California. ...

Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...

David Hammons David Hammons (born July 24, 1943) is an American artist, best known for his works in and around New York City and Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s. Early life David Hammons was born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, the youngest of ten ...

Arthur Jafa Arthur Jafa (; born Arthur Jafa Fielder, November 30, 1960) is an American video artist and cinematographer. Early life and education Jafa was born on November 30, 1960, in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which was ...

, and Glenn Kaino, and their musing on cross cultural connections and hybridities growing out of 1970s popular culture. Art reviewer

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position at the Times. Education and early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawre ...

praised the show for its recognition of "the increasingly blurred lines of racial difference" but also criticized the show as "simplistic" and mired in "artistic academicism and literal-mindedness". In 2007, Kim organized ''Henry Taylor: Sis and Bra'', the artist's first solo museum exhibition. Later, Kim presented exhibitions such as ''Kehinde Wiley: World Stage Lagos - Dakar'' (2008) and ''Flow'' (2008), referred to as the "African 'F' show" featuring work by artists from Africa such as Latifa Echakhch, Nicholas Hlobo,

Otobong Nkanga Otobong Nkanga (born 1974) is a Nigerian-born visual artist, tapestry maker and performance artist, based in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2015, she won the Yanghyun Prize. In her work she explores the social and topographical changes of her environmen ...

, and

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) is a British painter and writer of Ghanaian heritage. She is best known for her portraits of imaginary subjects, or ones derived from found objects, which are painted in muted colours. Her work has contributed to ...

at the Studio Museum. She also co-founded 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), where she became "a force within the city art scene". Her exhibitions included ''James Turell: A Retrospective'' (2013–14), 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), and was presented concurrent with major solo presentations of Turrell's work at the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

, New York, and the

Museum of Fine Arts Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

(MFAH); ''Human Nature: Contemporary Art from the Collection'' (2011), co-curated with Franklin Sirmans; ''Isaac Julien: Playtime'' (2019) that marked the artist's first major presentation in Los Angeles; and ''Julie Mehretu'' (2019-2021), a mid-career survey curated with Rujeko Hockley, which traveled to the

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

, Atlanta and the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

, Minneapolis. In 2019, Kim was promoted to full curator at LACMA. In 2021, Kim was hired as a curator-at-large for the

museum network.

Personal life

Kim married actor and comedian

David Alan Grier David Alan Grier (born June 30, 1956) is an American actor and comedian. Known for his roles on stage and screen, Grier gained popularity playing multiple roles in the American sketch comedy television series '' In Living Color'' (1990–1994) ...

in July 2007. The couple welcomed their daughter, Luisa Danbi Grier-Kim, in 2008, but divorced in July 2009. Kim later remarried Dr. Kevin Gruenberg, clinical psychologist and the co-founder and Executive Director of Love, Dad: Support for Fathers and Families. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

List of exhibitions

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

''Black American Portraits''
co-curated with Liz Andrews, 2021 *
Julie Mehretu
',* 2019 - 2021 co-organized with the

, New York, 2020; traveling to the

, Atlanta 2020–21; and the

, Minneapolis, 2021
''Isaac Julien: Playtime''
2019 *
Frances Stark: The Magic Flute
', 2017 *
Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination
',* 2015 co-curated with

Lynne Cooke Lynne Cooke is an Australian-born art scholar. Since August 2014 she has been the Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Early life and education Born in Geelong, Australia, Cooke receive ...

; toured

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...

, 2016–17 *
My Barbarian: Double Agency
', co-curated with Rita Gonzalez, 2015 *
James Turrell: A Retrospective
',* 2013-15 co-curated with

Michael Govan Michael Govan (born 1963) is the CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Previously, he was president and director of the Dia Art Foundation, and deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Ear ...

in conjunction with the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York; toured

National Gallery of Australia The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), formerly the Australian National Gallery, is the national art museum of Australia as well as one of the largest art museums in Australia, holding more than 166,000 works of art. Located in Canberra in th ...

, Canberra, 2014 and

The Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

, Jerusalem, 2014–15 *
Figure and Form in Contemporary Photography: Selections from the Permanent Collection
', 2012 *
Christian Marclay: The Clock
', 2011, 2012, 2015 *
Human Nature: Selections from the Permanent Collection
', 2011 *
Teresa Margolles
' in collaboration with Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), 2010–11

The Studio Museum in Harlem

''Kehinde Wiley: World Stage Africa, Lagos'' – Dakar
* 2008 *
Flow
'* 2008 *
Odili Donald Odita: Equalizer
', 2008 * ''Portraits, Landscapes and Abstractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem Permanent Collection at City Hall'',* Hon. Michael Bloomberg, 2007–09
''Midnight’s Daydream: Artists-in-Residence''
* 2007 *
Henry Taylor: Sis and Bra
', 2007
''Philosophy of Time Travel''
* 2007 *
Collection in Context: Silhouette
', 2007 *
Quid Pro Quo: Artists-in-Residence
',* 2006 *
Nadine Robinson: Alles Grau
',* 2006 *
Frequency
',* 2005 *
Collection in Context: Selections from the Permanent Collection
', 2005 *
Meschac Gaba: Tresses
',* 2005 *
Scratch: Artists-in-Residence
',* 2005 * ''Lamar Peterson: Picture in a Picture'', 2005 *
Figuratively
'* 2004 * ''Veni Vidi Video II'', 2004
''Hands On, Hands Down: Artists-in-Residence''
* 2003 * ''Black Belt'',* 2003. * ''Veni Vidi Video'', 2003 *
Collection in Context: Selections from the Permanent Collection
', 2002 *
Ironic Iconic: Artists-in-Residence
',* 2002 * ''Edgar Arceneaux: Drawings of Removal'', 2002 * ''Africaine'', 2001 * ''Freestyle'',* 2001 * ''John Bankston: Capture and Escape of Mr. M, Ch. 1,'' 2001 *
Harlem Postcards
' (ongoing seasonal project), 2002 – 2007

References

External links

LAND
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, Christine American art curators American women curators Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Connecticut College alumni 21st-century American women