Since arriving at the Asian Art Museum, I’ve spent these first months listening and learning — meeting with staff, board members, city officials, community partners, and countless visitors who’ve shared what this museum means to them. The following vision has emerged from those conversations and my own deep conviction about what we can become together.

Three guiding commitments will shape everything we do:

First, we are becoming the Bay Area’s cultural anchor and Asia’s global voice. — maintaining deep roots in our local community while leading global conversations about Asian art and culture.

Second, we celebrate Asian culture as foundational to global culture and to American life. We’re not introducing something exotic or only in the past. We’re illuminating the Asian and Asian diasporic influences that already shape how our world thinks, creates, and connects.

Third, we are offering both timeless encounters and cutting-edge experiments. — creating real human connection through innovative inquiry.

Why These Commitments Matter

This 21st century is the Asian century. From the tech rebuilding our economy and the food defining our neighborhoods to the aesthetics shaping our spaces and our way of life, Asian influence and Asian American innovation are everywhere. This is cultural DNA, not cultural tourism.

Over the next five years, picture two interwoven destinies unfolding. We become an essential destination, where people flow through our doors not because they planned an outing, but because we’re an integral part of the Bay Area’s rhythm. Every weekend pulses with the energy of families exploring heritage and neighbors discovering each other’s cultures, everyone finding new, hybrid communities.

Simultaneously, we continue to build unprecedented global networks. Emerging curators from Seoul, Mumbai, and Bangkok collaborate with Bay Area artists. Technology artists treat our galleries as laboratories. International collectors and cultural ambassadors consider us their San Francisco headquarters.

We’re becoming new storymakers — exploring Afro-Asian connections, Scandinavian-Japanese design dialogues, and Asian innovation’s far-reaching influence on world cultures.

Your Role as Co-Creator

This transformation requires all of us. When you bring your family and friends to the museum, you’re sharing more than your love of art. You are helping to grow and galvanize the community that will carry on this work.

You’re not supporting this vision — you’re co-creating it. 

We’re the place where Asia and the world meet, where ancient and contemporary dance together, where “you,” “me,” and “them” become simply “us.”

The future is here. And thanks to you, we’re leading it.

This vision builds on the incredible partnership of our Founders Circle, board members, Nexus and Curator’s Forum members, Jade Circle, Gump Society, and all our Patrons, Friends, and Members.