Michelle Kuo (born 1977 or 1978) is an American curator, writer, and art historian. Since 2018, Kuo has been a curator of painting and sculpture at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

. She was previously editor-in-chief of ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'' magazine starting in 2010.

Education

Kuo earned a BA from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, majoring in art history and political science. As a graduate student at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, she co-curated a show on the works of architect

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

at the university's

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building designed primarily by Le Corbusier in the United States—he contributed to the design of the United Nations Secretariat Building— ...

on the occasion of the Carpenter Center's 40th anniversary in 2004. From 2005 to 2007, Kuo was the Wyeth Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

in Washington D.C. Kuo returned to Harvard to earn a PhD in the history of art and architecture, where

Yve-Alain Bois Yve-Alain Bois (born April 16, 1952) is a professor emeritus of Art History at the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Education Bois received an M.A. from the École Pratique des Hautes É ...

was her advisor. Her dissertation focused on the art group

Experiments in Art and Technology Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and ...

; she defended her dissertation in December 2017.

Career

Kuo became senior editor of ''

'' magazine in March 2008 while a PhD candidate at Harvard. In April 2010, she became editor-in-chief, replacing

Tim Griffin John Timothy Griffin (born August 21, 1968) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 57th Attorney General of Arkansas, attorney general of Arkansas. He served as the 20th Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas, lieutenant governor of Arkans ...

. In this position, she edited issues on the subjects of political art, race, gender, and revolution. ''

Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...

'' credited Kuo for shifting the magazine towards an academic direction with issues focused on

identity politics Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, Race (human categorization), race, nationality, religion, Religious denomination, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, Socioeconomic status, social background ...

and the place of art in daily life. In 2015, she acted as an advisor on the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art exhibition ''Experiments in Art and Technology''. Kuo resigned from her post at ''Artforum'' in October 2017, ending her tenure with the January 2018 issue, following reports of alleged sexual harassment by one of the magazine's publishers. ''Artforum'' web editor

David Velasco David Velasco (born October 23, 1978) is an American writer and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of the art magazine ''Artforum'' from 2017 to 2023. He is the editor of ''Modern Dance'', a 2017 series of books on contemporary choreographers pu ...

succeeded Kuo as editor-in-chief. In February 2018, Kuo was appointed the Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the

(MoMA) in New York City. In early 2019, she organized the exhibition ''New Order: Art and Technology in the Twenty-First Century'', which showcases "sprawling installations, canny video art or interactive sculptures" that were "made with technologies most of us already know and love (or hate)", as ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' art critic Martha Schwendener writes. A review in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' called ''New Order'' "superb" and praised Kuo's "deep" knowledge of the subject and "agile approach". Working with New York painter

Amy Sillman Amy Sillman (born 1955) is a New York-based visual artist, known for process-based paintings that move between abstraction and figuration, and engage nontraditional media including animation, zines and installation.Farago, Jason''The New York T ...

, Kuo organized the exhibition ''The Shape of Shape'' for the reopening of the museum in late 2019 following renovations. The exhibition showcased works chosen from the MoMA's holdings by Sillman and is an installment in the museum's "Artist's Choice" exhibition series, in which an invited artist organizes an exhibition with any works from its collection. ''The New Yorker'' art editor Andrea K. Scott described the exhibition as an "exciting expression of the ethos of the newly renovated MOMA." Kuo served on the juries that awarded the Lise Wilhelmsen Art Award to

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 ...

in 2019 and to

Guadalupe Maravilla Guadalupe Maravilla (born 1976), formerly known as Irvin Morazan, is a transdisciplinary visual artist, choreographer, and healer. At the age of eight, Maravilla was part of the first wave of unaccompanied, undocumented children to arrive at the Un ...

in 2021. Kuo and

Stuart Comer Stuart Comer is an American art curator and writer who is currently Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was co-curator of the 2014 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, alongside M ...

were curators of the 2023 exhibition "Signals: How Video Transformed the World," MoMA's largest exhibition of video art. In March 2025, Kuo led the team behind MoMA's acclaimed show "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the first full-career survey exhibit of the work of American abstract painter and sculptor

Jack Whitten Jack Whitten (December 5, 1939 – January 20, 2018) was an American abstract painter and sculptor, who was part of the Black Abstractionism canon. According to the Museum of Modern Art, he "invented art-making techniques that were the first of ...

Personal life

Kuo is Chinese American. She recalls her uncle was the first artist whose work interested her, having grown up with his works in her home. Her uncle initially planned to study physics after emigrating from Taiwan, but ultimately became an artist and illustrator and moved to

Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

to create "everything from country music album covers to paintings addressing Chinese American identity."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuo, Michelle Living people 21st-century American essayists 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers American art curators American art critics American art historians American essayists American magazine editors American women academics American women curators American women editors American women essayists American women writers of Chinese descent American writers of Taiwanese descent People associated with the Museum of Modern Art (New York City) Harvard University alumni Stanford University alumni American women art historians 1970s births

Education

Career

Personal life

See also

References