Jul 18, 2024
As part of its broader investment in cultural communities and its expanding contemporary program, the Asian Art Museum Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art & Culture will proudly launch a new discounted tier of membership this summer: the artist membership, available for actively practicing artists of all origins, working across all genres and media, at any stage of their career. In addition, each living artist with artwork in the museum collection will receive a lifetime artist membership. Benefits of the new artist membership tier include invitations to special artist-centric happy hours, meet ups, talks, and exhibition openings.
“Our Artist membership will honor the commitment and vision of working artists — in our collection and beyond — who come to the museum for inspiration, connection, and scholarly research,” says Danielle Hobart, the Asian Art Museum’s director of membership. “We have already seen the incredible impact that the artists in our contemporary art program have made at the museum, and we can’t wait to welcome this new community to our membership family.”
Recent headline-grabbing and attendance record-breaking exhibitions of contemporary art at the museum have included Tokyo-based digital collective teamLab (2021–2022), Hong Kong and London-based Kongkee (2022–2023), and global superstar Takashi Murakami (2023–2024); meanwhile, the museum’s head of contemporary art, Abby Chen, along with colleagues Naz Cuguoglu and Cheng Xu — assistant curator of contemporary art & programs and assistant curator of games & technology, respectively — have been steadily building a portfolio of Asian, Asian American, and Asian diaspora artists who can partner regularly with the museum and feature within the museum’s collection.
Through program series such as Xu’s RAD (Research And Development) platform and group exhibitions such as Cuguoglu’s Into View: New Voices, New Stories or Chen’s After Hope: Videos of Resistance, the goal has been, in Chen’s words, “to ensure the Asian Art Museum is a destination for discovery, inspiration, and engagement for artists across generations and cultures. By making membership is accessible to working artists in our community — and beyond — we are demonstrating our commitment to a vital Bay Area arts scene. Our goal is for us to connect with more artists than ever before and to offer ourselves as a place of care and imagination for Asian and Asian American culture and identity in all its many forms.”
The artist membership will come with the full benefits of a standard membership, including:
“We’re investing in the museum as a celebrated destination for our communities and the artists who interpret and redefine the world for today and well into the future,” says Jay Xu, the Barbara Bass Bakar director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum. “The artist membership offers the museum as a platform for creative minds to gather and let the sparks fly, generating the innovative ideas that ensure the worlds’ eyes will always be on the Bay Area.”
About the Asian Art Museum
Located in the heart of San Francisco, the museum is home to one of the world’s finest collections of Asian art, with more than 20,000 awe-inspiring artworks ranging from ancient jades and ceramics to contemporary video installations. Dynamic special exhibitions, cultural celebrations and public programs for all ages provide rich art experiences that unlock the past and spark questions about the future.
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