Pearl Lam (林明珠): Hello, this is the Pearl Lam Podcast. I’m in New York now, and it will be. It’s really splendid because now I’m seeing the wonderful Melissa Chiu. And Melissa, would you be so kind to tell your audience briefly about yourself?
Melissa Chiu: Hi, Pearl. Wonderful to see you again. It’s been a while.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It’s been really a long time.
Melissa Chiu: It’s my honour to be part of your podcast.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I’m so delighted to have you here.
Melissa Chiu: So I am the Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, which is a part of the Smithsonian Institution, and it’s our National Museum of Modern Contemporary Art. And I’ve been there for about ten years, actually.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Oh, my God, time flies. Because I used to see you a lot in New York. Since you moved to Washington, I’m seeing you less and less. And since COVID was really a big interruption. A big interruption. Let’s start talking about Melissa in Australia.
Melissa Chiu: Oh, yeah, that’s a long time ago.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That’s a long time ago. And then when, you know, I remember the first time when I went to Australia, you were sending me, you giving me all the names of the people that I would, and then I went and visit, including New Zealand, like the Gibbs Farm and all that. And when I was there, everybody, you know, you’re like a hero in there, especially in the art world. People start telling me about 4A. Tell me about 4A, because it seems that this is your job. This is the job that you had before you came to America.
Melissa Chiu: Yes. Well, it was a long time ago.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know.
Melissa Chiu: I mean, thinking back, I remember that the idea behind 4A was really about fostering up and coming Asian-Australian artists. And I was a curator, and so we kind of brought together and built a real community around that space.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But was it important at the time that a platform for these Asian-Australian artists, I mean, that they were being ignored or…
Melissa Chiu: Yeah. The impetus behind it was that this was a very specific moment in the Asia Pacific region, and Australia really wanted, in a kind of geopolitical sense, to be part of the region. And so there were all sorts of economic agreements happening, and then culture followed that. And so if we think of the 1990s in Australia. This was a moment that’s often been categorised as an Asian turn. They talk about it historically as an Asian term. When Australia, all of a sudden, after a real Euro American focus, had said, okay, let us see about this region that we are a part of. But weve never really paid attention to culturally and within that focus, that was really a department of foreign affairs and trade kind of focus, there started to be more cultural projects, but they kind of ignored the Asian artists and asian community that were living in Australia, that were very much a part of Australian life. And so as I was at university, at art school, I noticed how few. Actually, there were none. No Asian-Australian artists represented in museums, no Asian-Australian curators working here at the time. There was really a dearth. There was really no one. And so we, in our youthful optimism, decided to create a space that was a space not exclusively for Asian-Australian artists, because our whole idea was, how could we be more inclusive? How could we place Asian-Australian artists alongside inclusive?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That is really early nineties talking about.
Melissa Chiu: In the 1990s, we wanted to be not exclusive, but inclusive. And so it was never, it was actually never an arrangement where it was just for Asian-Australian artists. We wanted it to be for everyone, but obviously highlighting the work of Asian-Australian artists. And we did it through exhibitions, through a film festival, through international exchange projects and residencies. But it was very much at the heart, an artist organisation.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, your father is Chinese. How would your father thought when you wanted to choose art as a subject?
Melissa Chiu: I know it’s a convention. A lot of people talk about their parents, especially Chinese fathers and mothers, not really wanting. I mean, the one thing my father asked of all of his children, and I have three sisters, was that we all went to university. He didn’t mind what we studied.
Pearl Lam (林明珠):Wow.
Melissa Chiu: At all. And so I went to university and I studied art history, so he was okay with that.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I remember you told me that you did a thesis, your PhD is on and on Cantonese artists, right? The artist from
Melissa Chiu: Chinese contemporary
Pearl Lam (林明珠): it’s chinese contemporary. And then you wrote a thesis on what is this group?
Melissa Chiu: Diaspora.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah.
Melissa Chiu: And that really came from my own, I think, coming to terms with my own heritage. My father is from China and then Hong Kong, and my mother’s Australian of Irish descent. And it was from a sense of wanting to understand how he, how he arrived in Australia, the kinds of cultural differences, because in terms of our upbringing, there were things that were different from other households. And I noticed them. We were also the only Asian children in our entire school.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Really? Wow.
Melissa Chiu: And so, you know, and so in some ways, the decision to focus on Chinese artists was, for my PhD was in some ways driven by my wanting to understand my father a little bit better. Although this obviously only comes to me in hindsight that at the time I was more curious. He had taken me back to China, to Hong Kong, and also to China to see southern China, to see other things. And from that, I was intrigued at the art scene that was just beginning.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): To be more visible in the nineties.
Melissa Chiu: In the early nineties.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): How interesting. And then you came to New York, Asia Society, and you were, I mean, I always seen you like a cultural ambassador. I mean, to Asia Society, the whole setup of Asia Society, introducing Asian artists that really matched how you’re and how you approach. Like in, in Australia, you did the four a, you did your PhD. Isn’t that, you know, it’s just along the way, it’s just, it’s like built for you.
Melissa Chiu: Well, it was the first curatorial appointment at an American museum that was focused on Asian and Asian-American contemporary art. And it’s hard to imagine today, but it was a very unusual post because larger scale museums really couldn’t work out. It seems hard today to understand it, but couldn’t work out where to place Asian contemporary art. Was it with the Asian traditional departments or was it with the contemporary, largely western departments? But for Asia society, those kinds of boundaries didn’t really exist. And so there was an acknowledgement after years of, after really years of a commitment towards contemporary art through major first time exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art, of pan asian exhibitions, largely under the leadership of Doctor Vishaka Desai. And then she had arranged for the endowment of this new position that saw my appointment.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I really. I see you using that post to really create this cultural dialogue between USA and China. Not just China, but in Asia and Asia, because I do not believe that in America, and especially at those days, they really have a clear and understanding about our culture. And even today, I mean, it’s completely a misinterpretation. But then you took this job as a curator, and later on, even when you were director, you were still creating show. It was pretty amazing because from a director you have to raise money, right? And then you’re still curating show. I mean, that is pretty amazing because I haven’t seen a lot of very successful director who raise money, but they usually do not. They no longer curate any shows. But you are doing both. And what impresses me, what has always impressed me is all those days that you were in Asia Society. You gave platform for all these Asian artists who never have been shown in America or internationally. So you open it like Zhang Huan, our great friend, our ash painting. You introduced me to Zhang Huan, and actually, and then later, Nara. Nara now is so huge. So you gave those platforms to every of these artists. I mean, it’s admirable.
Melissa Chiu: Well, I think that I was very interested in figuring out how to curate exhibitions that were a recognition of artists that were doing extraordinary work that I felt it important for American audiences, and particularly here in New York, to know about. And I think that Zhang Huan’s story was an interesting one because he had spent so much time in New York. In fact, he was part of the Whitney biennial, even. And so a part of his development as an artist actually was being here in New York. And so I think that idea of him making extraordinary endurance performance artworks in Beijing’s East Village, then being a part of the Asia Society inside out new Chinese art exhibition in 1998, deciding to stay in New York for nearly a decade and then returning back to China, but this time to Shanghai, was a really interesting kind of narrative, but also one that was very familiar to me after my dissertation. It was really about artists like Zhang Huan, who had left China. And then the final chapter, when I turned my thesis into a book, was about the return. In fact, when I began my research for my dissertation, it was all about leave the country fever. It was all about the fact that artists were all leaving in droves, in hundreds. Filmmakers, writers, visual artists, they were all leaving. But by the post two thousands, they were actually going back. It was exodus back. And so in some ways, that exhibition of Zhang Huan’s was telling a little bit of that story that I was familiar with from my research. And then the Yoshitomo Nara, I was interested in him.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But Zhang Huan, you really made his international career.
Melissa Chiu: He had a real New York moment, I have to say.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I mean, New York Times.
Melissa Chiu: The coverage
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, it’s just amazing. It’s not just you were doing that. You were actually even talking to the press, doing everything.
Melissa Chiu: He had a moment of real recognition. And, you know, I mean, when he went back to China and started to create very different work on such a momentous scale and with different materials, he really had something to say. And I think that people could see that.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So impressive. But I want you to know is, when you first took up this job as a curator and later on, you became the director, how was the audience reacting to the shows that you first, you know, exhibited?
Melissa Chiu: Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting is that that first, throughout the 1990s, this was a moment when Asia Society played such an important role within the New York art scene of doing the first time nation based shows, the first time China show, the first time pan Asian exhibition of traditions tensions, curated by Doctor Apanan Poshyananda. So there was, in some ways, an understanding that something was going on in Asia. And I say that because when I first arrived in 2001 in New York to take on the position, I was told by some that there was no such thing as contemporary art in Asia.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But Gao Ming Lu just did an art inside out.
Melissa Chiu: I know. 28 I think that was part of the misunderstanding. So when I. By the time those shows had happened, and then I started, and then I had been curator for a while, and then I became director, I realised that actually, we needed to transition a little bit from the large scale group exhibitions, where you’d show a handful or a select number of artists work, into a more in depth presentation. And that’s where the search for how could we present in depth or comprehensive exhibitions of single artists, like a monographic show, essentially. And we started to do those in the kind of mid two thousands.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how was the reception when you first started?
Melissa Chiu: Oh, there was a lot of interest. In fact, those exhibitions, I think, in some ways were more. There was more receptivity to those artists works in some ways, after, in some ways, those big group shows, the nation-based shows, paved the way or the foundation, an understanding for how an artist could actually, you could present a solo show by an major artists from Asia.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But then you did a very controversial show. I always remember this cultural revolution show.
Melissa Chiu: Yes.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I thought that was amazing. In America, you do a cultural revolution. In China, you did that show, you borrow all those posters and then all the paintings, and the paintings, the paintings of the post. I was totally breath taken. I mean. I mean, how do America capitalistic seeing this communist cultural revolution? What was the reception at the time?
Melissa Chiu: Well, I think.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I mean, I love controversy. I think contemporary art has to be about
Melissa Chiu: That show had its moments. It was about five years worth of work. And I knew early on that it was such a complex exhibition to try to do
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And how did you get.
Melissa Chiu: How do you borrow. I co-curated it with a man called Sheng Tian Zheng.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know, I know, I know.
Melissa Chiu: Who was an extraordinary man. He was a teacher in Hangzhou at the National Art School, who experienced firsthand the Cultural Revolution. He was actually persecuted himself as a teacher. And so he had firsthand visceral experience of the Cultural Revolution and knew a lot of the artists who were practising who were younger than him, they were the Red Guards. And so I invited him to collaborate with me on the exhibition. And I knew from the beginning that it would be very complicated, because on the one hand, you have in China a real reticence and actually abhorrence of wanting to even talk about the Cultural Revolution. And it became even more pronounced as the Beijing Olympics approached in 2008, which is when exhibition was slated to open. And then, on the other hand, we had a lot of pressure here in the United States to present some of the violence and the deaths and the kind of that darker side to the Cultural Revolution, the reality.
Pearl Lam: And in China, they hide. hide. They’ve been hiding.
Melissa Chiu: It’s not spoken about at all.
Pearl Lam: They hide. Younger people don’t even know the atrocity and all that.
Melissa Chiu: So I came to the idea through, believe it or not, my PhD research, when I interviewed each of the artists, artists like Xu Bing and Sai Guo Chang, they all said to me, if you want to really understand my work, you have to go back to the Cultural Revolution. And so that’s how I ended up doing a Cultural Revolution show. I said, oh, well, they’re talking about this period that I know very little about, and there are very few books. And so I thought that that was a real opportunity to create a body of research over a five year period with lots of primary resources. We interviewed a lot of artists. We travelled. Sheng Tian and I travelled all across China looking for work. And it really was driven by this idea that I don’t think that there’s another time in history on this scale where there is such a singular visual vocabulary, meaning the only works of art and images that people in China were exposed to, a billion people, they were only exposed to images of the Cultural Revolution.
Pearl Lam: Social realism.
Melissa Chiu: Yes, social realism. So what does that. What impact does that have on your idea of the world? And so that was the starting point. And so we went to all of those artists who were young red gods, who were painting the large scale history paintings of Mao that were then reproduced hundreds of millions of times in posters. It’s hard to imagine today, but if you were whoever you were in China, you had posters of these paintings everywhere, surrounding you, in your. Where you lived, where you worked, where you ate. So the idea was, how could we build a body of knowledge about that period as a visual culture just for.
Pearl Lam: Just for the audience to know? The cultural revolution is in the 1960s, until 19, 60, 76, when Mao Zedong passed away. And during that time, all the university were closed down. So. So in the 1960s, for ten years, there were not there. There were no education. And all the. And, um. And most of the young kids, they became the Red Guards. And if you would have read George Orwell, 1984 it is. It was exactly like that.
Melissa Chiu: Yeah. I mean, it was a real, true revolution, in a sense, that it disrupted the entire country. There were no schools, there were no university classes. All the young people were sent. First of all, there were denunciations, and then they were sent out to the countryside to be reeducated as farmers.
Pearl Lam: And all the professors, they were all beating up and being beaten up or sent to prison or re education. It was a completely ten years. And you were very brave to do this whole exhibition because no one else has done it.
Melissa Chiu: It really was.
Pearl Lam: No one else. No one else has done it and no one else dares to do it or have the relationship to borrow those painting. It was really breathtaking. And up to now, no one has ever redo it. I mean, explore that topic again.
Melissa Chiu: Well, and because there are books about it. There are books. But the exhibitions are, you know, I mean, exhibitions are incredibly difficult to organise, and even for us, we had an agreement with an exhibition agency that owned a lot of works, and they withdrew at the last moment the loans when there was a decree that the cultural revolution was not to be spoken about. In 2008, in the lead up to the Olympics, they withdrew the works. And so we went back to all the artists and they gave us other works they kind of. That they hadn’t shown us before. So there was a great kind of will on the part of artists for their works to be acknowledged from this period.
Pearl Lam: Wow, that is really impressive.
Melissa Chiu: It was very dramatic at the point.
Pearl Lam: Very dramatic. Then you left and you went to Hirshhorn. Yes, and Hirshhorn. You actually have redefined your role completely. I mean, I remember. Isn’t that the first show you did? There was a Mark Bradford show, there was a Nara show. So all of a sudden, Melissa, you forgot about Asians.
Melissa Chiu: Are you sure about that?
Pearl Lam: Asians. You were focusing on the Mark Bradford and all that. I understand that your role has changed because you cannot be confined, like, territory about art, but I thought it was interesting because you create an environment that actually is like a cultural exchange. And that was really another very impressive act. I mean, one of the notes that I got was, you’re being celebrated in Washington.
Melissa Chiu: Oh, really?
Pearl Lam: Yes. How was your Washington live? And how was these challenges in Hirshhorn Musuem?
Melissa Chiu: Well, I think to some extent, the work that we do in museums is driven by our mission and we can shape in a way how we express that mission. And so I looked very carefully at, in some ways, the strengths of the Hirshhorn. And the strengths of the Hirshhorn were in, you know, its extraordinary collection. Mister Josheph and his collection actually was very international for its time. It was more European, Latin American and American, not so much Asian, but that allowed us to be able to borrow that. So one of the first major exhibitions that I did co curate with Melissa Ho was of Shirin Neshat’s work. And so that was only the second major exhibition of a female artist at the museum. Oh, she’s great. And it was really about her relationship to Iran in diaspora, because most of the readings of her work and the exhibitions curated about her work were about either gender or
Pearl Lam: She’s always talked about the woman’s right and being suppressed. She does being women in Iran.
Melissa Chiu: That’s true. But I think that if you look at her body of work, actually, a lot of it is looking carefully at iranian history. And so that for us was actually a really important show because it was right at the moment of the nuclear proliferation talks in DC.
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Melissa Chiu: And so some of my experiences at Asia Society, where you can look not just at the visual arts and the artists, but also the geopolitical context, actually helped me to, I think, bring another dimension to the Hirshhorn. So, yes, I did work with Mark Bradford on his largest ever commission, 300 linear foot painting about the civil war history.
Pearl Lam: So you’re using the artist’s voice to show a different perspective.
Melissa Chiu: Exactly.
Pearl Lam: And of what, you know, the culture and everything. How so?
Melissa Chiu: We made some acquisitions of Asian artists in the time, whether it was Dan Sukhoi artists from Korea. We also had a major acquisition of Ai Weiwei’s works from Alcatraz, which were important for Washington because it was portraits of Chinese, portraits of prisoners of political conscience, and some of them were American. And, you know, so that in and of itself is, I think that was an important statement, I think, for our museum because Hirshhorn had already presented AI Weiwei’s major retrospective.
Pearl Lam: But you actually reset the mission of Hirshhorn when you, I mean, you actually give a completely an expanded mission for the Hirshhorn museum. You have defined it. You really have defined its role. How do you feel about it?
Melissa Chiu: Well, I think every director brings a different set of experiences, and I think we all interpret the mission. For me, it was important to see the Hirshhorn within the ecology of the Smithsonian and then to see the Hirshhorn within its peer group of modern contemporary art museums, whether it’s in New York, LA or elsewhere. And so I think that for me, it was just figuring out our place in the world. And so I’m interested in an expanded notion of art history because I come from Australia, which is only a middle power.
Pearl Lam: It’s very far away.
Melissa Chiu: It’s very far away. And I’m also of Asian descent, and so I have a different worldview in some ways than others might. So I think the big kind of. One of the legacy projects that I’ve been working on is with Hiroshi Sugamoto, who is.
Pearl Lam: I love Sugimoto.
Melissa Chiu: Yeah. I mean, he’s a japanese american artist who’s best known for his photographs, but he’s been doing architectural projects.
Pearl Lam: Yes. I went to his restaurant in Tokyo.
Melissa Chiu: That’s right. And his Odawara project called Inora. And so I invited him to. To redesign the lobby for the museum and then subsequently our sculpture garden. And so that will be one of the legacy projects that we kind of, you know, is really a gift to the nation in some ways.
Pearl Lam: Not just that. Not just. We’re talking about the shows. I mean, your board loves you. You create a whole board and they love you. And that is. I mean, that is really difficult, because in America, especially, even though Hirshhorn is not totally a private museum, but you still need to raise money. Sure.
Melissa Chiu: I mean, we think of ourselves as a public private, and, you know, our board is enormously supportive of all the programmes and exhibitions that we do.
Pearl Lam: Because your board loves you.
Melissa Chiu: Well, your board loves the museum and.
Pearl Lam: Because it’s very tough, actually, if you have to, because every museum is raising money. Right.
Melissa Chiu: Well, I think here in the States, you know, the private fundraising really helps support the lion’s share of most museum activities.
Pearl Lam: So nowadays you don’t curate any more shows because you have to focus about your.
Melissa Chiu: Sometimes I’m allowed to. I curated the Hawaii triennial, which I called the Pacific century, which was an Asia Pacific.
Pearl Lam: When was that?
Melissa Chiu: Because I know there was like, two years ago.
Pearl Lam: Two years ago was the ones. I know. Nanjo was one.
Melissa Chiu: That’s right. So Fumu and Nanjo curated the first Honolulu biennial, and then we turned it into a triennial.
Pearl Lam: Wow.
Melissa Chiu: And that was to give us more time. And it was during COVID. And so the idea was Hawaii is located in between the US and Asia. It’s the furthest kind of point in the Pacific for the US. And at one point, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, declared the 21st century as the Pacific century. And we know that the Asia Pacific is growing in cultural importance and economic importance. And so the idea was, how could we curate an exhibition with an emphasis on Asian artists, not exclusively, but mostly and across the city of Honolulu. And it was a wonderful experience, lots of collaboration with local artists as well.
Pearl Lam: Yeah, that is very impressive. I remember there was once you took a whole group of museum directors coming to my place, to my home to have dinner. So how do you have this idea to form this committee? Director, US China Director Committee. How do you, you know, where do you have time? You write, you curate, you form all these committee.
Melissa Chiu: Well, that project was a really important one for the work that we were doing at the time at Asia Society. And it was a collaboration with Orville Schell, who is the director of the US China Centre at the Asia Society. And we had come to this idea that, in fact, we know within geopolitical world that the US China relationship is key for the future, for the present and for the future. And yet at that moment in time, China had just announced that it was intending to build 1000 new museums.
Pearl Lam: Yes.
Melissa Chiu: Remember that announcement?
Pearl Lam: I remember.
Melissa Chiu: And then at the same time, within museums in the United States, there was a lot of conversation and some consternation about the collection stewardship that so many of our museums, all of our museums really have most of our collection in storage. And so I had this idea that, okay, if you have all of these new museums, but not necessarily collections in China, and yet you have all of these museums in the US who have collections that are in storage, is there not a moment at which you could really have a real collaboration based on need and desire? And so with that in mind, we organised a series of summits and then smaller conferences where American museums would meet their Chinese counterparts, museum directors in China and then in the US. And so from that we published two white papers about what it really meant to have a cultural dialogue. Of course, now I look back on that. Some things did happen actually between loans and things like that. But if I look back on it, that was a high point, I think, in kind of cultural relations, in some.
Pearl Lam: Ways, we need it now, you know, us China, we need it now.
Melissa Chiu: Compared to today.
Pearl Lam: Yeah, compared to today. It is really sad. So that project did not continue after you, after you left?
Melissa Chiu: It did actually. So there were a number of meetings that did continue and white papers as well. So that was something that I was.
Pearl Lam: Very happy about because that is really important, especially looking at today’s relationship. This is really, you know, art is soft, power is really important to create that understanding.
Melissa Chiu: Yes. And art can do things that often other arenas can’t. It’s like, you know, often it’s that first step, whether it’s borrowing important objects or artworks from a country, showing them with respect. You know, there is a whole history of that happening.
Pearl Lam: And I want to know more about your TED talk.
Melissa Chiu: The TED talk?
Pearl Lam: Yes, I think that was a while ago. That was. Share with the audience about this while ago. I know.
Melissa Chiu: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Pearl Lam: Tell me more. If today you are asked to do another TED talk, what topic will you be speaking?
Melissa Chiu: I think it would. So the TED talk that I created was about how artists can predict the future. And it was looking at a number of artists for whom their ideas are becoming more of a part of everyday thinking. I mean, I think I started with Marcel Duchamp, who. Who, you know, created over 100 years ago, this idea of a ready made, which was an artwork that he didn’t physically make. It was made by a factory or something like that. The most famous example was the fountain, which is really a machine made urinal, 1917. I mean, that radical act, if we think back, was probably one of the most influential artworks of the last hundred years. And so in some ways, that work also predicted a lot of other things, which is really a 21st century idea of instead of something being material, and in this world, it’s actually, the idea is the more important thing.
Pearl Lam: That’s what you always. The idea is more important, not the object. Yeah.
Melissa Chiu: And so that fundamentally, I think, is an important one in the art world. But I think even today. So if I had to do a TED talk today, I’m not sure what I would do it on.
Pearl Lam: I would say a Ted talk today. I mean, if, you know, tech talk like can AI do, I mean, Chat GPT actually can draw if you ask them, oh, I want a drawing between a Basquiat and a Jiao Wuji, and then they will come out. So how are you seeing art creative? Because art is not about creativity. Art is about concept, about thinking, about using art to address or to share a problem. So what are you going to speak in a tech talk today with all the technology jumping out?
Melissa Chiu: So I’ve been thinking about the twin. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because we just organised an exhibition at the Hirshhorn called Revolutions, and it’s drawn from our museum permanent collection, and it begins at 1860 through 1960. And if you look at this period. Yeah, if you look at this period, actually, what it really was was a trend towards abstraction driven by the idea that photography, so technology freed artists from having to represent reality. So they no longer had to paint faithfully the world around them or a portrait of someone, because a photograph was able to do that. So in a way, it freed them from having to paint faithfully, record faithfully, and so they could make art that was just art. And that’s, you know, if we fast forward to the 1960s, a minimalism, minimalist sculpture was all about being minimalist sculpture. It wasn’t trying to be anything else. And so if we think today, I believe that AI is that disruptor to the art world, in some ways, that photography is. So what happens when AI can create something? In some ways, this is why we see much more of a return within the art world to the handcrafters, to the hand, you know, whether it is painting, whether it is clay, whether it’s embroidery, all of these things that humans make rather than machines.
Pearl Lam: Now, most of the art school, they don’t even teach you how to paint, how to draw. I was even teaching.
Melissa Chiu: No, that’s right. The skills.
Pearl Lam: Yeah, the skills are unknown.
Melissa Chiu: Skills based teaching.
Pearl Lam: Exactly. And I was even told that now school, they have, they have actually cancelled and took away the drawing lessons. So if we have to go back, the whole curriculum has to change.
Melissa Chiu: Yes.
Pearl Lam: I mean, so I think it’s good because I.
Melissa Chiu: It’s another change.
Pearl Lam: Yeah. Because I, I thought that it’s pushing too much away because most of the, I mean, all, all these art schools today, and most of the art students, they can’t paint. They can’t.
Melissa Chiu: Because it was the emphasis on ideas.
Pearl Lam: Yes, it’s on the ideas and on the concept. You have to read and read and write essays. Okay. As a museum director, one of the big questions I always wanted to ask.
Melissa Chiu: Is we’re changing tech now.
Pearl Lam: Yeah. You know, that museum has huge endowment. The museum who doesn’t have huge endowment, so they have to sell tickets. So all of a sudden there are museums who would just have artists that will attract selling to have tickets. So how are you. But you don’t have this problem. But a lot of museum has the problem to balance between selling tickets or balance to what they believe this artist should. Should be shown in a museum. But having said all that is many, you know, I always thought that museums role is also to show people artists that, you know, is not necessarily is in the market.
Melissa Chiu: Right.
Pearl Lam: I mean, they have to show what they believe in those artists. But many museums has not been doing that. Most of the museum is just showing mainstream artists. And then now we see museums who wants ticket? They will just sell, they will just show. Artists who’s popular may not be accepted by these. You know, we have a, we have a very. Our art critics has taken a different role, and it’s completely off. They are not with the popular artist. You know, they don’t see popular artists should be accepted by the art community. So how are you seeing all this being compromised or having a solution?
Melissa Chiu: There are so many, or agreement. There are so many changes today in our world after Covid, and I don’t think we’ve fully realised what a rupture Covid was for all of us. And so that two, three years. So it would be true to say, I think, that museums are under enormous financial pressures and that some are heavily reliant on ticketing. So for our museum, we’re not permitted to sell tickets. We’re free. And that’s, we’re one of the only major museums of modern contemporary art that are free in this country, which is great. So in some ways, you know, I think that the, the whole conversation around audience for museums is changing too. When I, I’ll never forget when I first joined the Association of Art Museum Directors, gosh, 15 years ago, the big debate for museum directors was, what are we going to do with millennials if they don’t. If they don’t want to go to museums?
Pearl Lam: And now, now.
Melissa Chiu: But we know millennials actually like museums. Museums have become important places for the viewing of art, for meeting others, you know, so the museums roles have actually changed as well, and within.
Pearl Lam: But the very young community, like the generation of Gen Z, I don’t see them going to a museum at all. They just look at the screen and do everything in the screen.
Melissa Chiu: Everything’s screen based. But I think that one of the things that museums offer is that direct encounter with art. It is very different to see a Mondrian painting.
Pearl Lam: Oh, yeah, of course, definitely.
Melissa Chiu: Right. And so I think that the impulse of how do you help people to. In some ways, it’s an effort towards slow viewing. It’s like, how do you help people to get off their screens? In some ways, museums are that optimal place. You cannot be on a screen. You cannot be on a screen and be looking at art. You can be taking a photo, but you can’t be looking at art and on a screen.
Pearl Lam: Does your daughter fixated in a screen or nothing? Does she actually go out because of the. Because of you, of course. You know, this cultivation that you bring them to museum, you bring them to visit, you know, other places, or does she prefer to stay at home and look at the screen.
Melissa Chiu: Every parent’s challenge is what to do with screens. You know, Jonathan Haidt just wrote a and really interesting book about this generation that grew up with screens. We didn’t grow up with screens and some of the consequences of that. And so I think, you know, all parents are evaluating how much of screens is a good thing, especially when most children are on screens during school hours as well. They’re learning on screens. It’s unavoidable to an extent, but you want to actually figure out what are the important in real life things that, you know, you want your child to have.
Pearl Lam: So do you have parents bringing the children? I mean, so one of the things.
Melissa Chiu: That we’ve done at the Hirshhorn is it’s greatly expanded our education and learning activities and we will open a new learning centre that we’re calling the Hirshhorn Art School.
Pearl Lam: Wow.
Melissa Chiu: October. So it’s all about how can you actively have people making art, responding to art, looking at art in the museum space? That’s the impetus behind that.
Pearl Lam: So Melissa I just, I read and you are in one of these lists as being the most influential woman in Washington. Much more important than, than other Clintons.
Melissa Chiu: I don’t think so Pearl. I can assure you, I can assure you that that’s not true. I mean, I’m very honoured to be in the company of the other amazing women on that list. And I think that, you know, there are, there are many different elements to Washington society in a way, just like here in New York. And it’s refracted differently. So it is more on the political side with fewer cultural leaders. But it’s an interesting city because it is so different from New York.
Pearl Lam: My God, you now really is living in Washington. I remember when you first have to go to Washington, you were coming back and forth.
Melissa Chiu: There was a back and forth. Yeah.
Pearl Lam: So now you really are.
Melissa Chiu: I know, I’ve been there ten years. I know. I’m fully settled.
Pearl Lam: Very settled there. And how about your daughter? They are all, I mean, she settled there.
Melissa Chiu: Yeah. It’s a wonderful city.
Pearl Lam: Wow. I mean, Washington, in my whole life I only spent 3 hours there.
Melissa Chiu: Well, perfect.
Pearl Lam: So I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.
Melissa Chiu: We have to change that.
Pearl Lam: I’m coming to see you. I’m coming to see Coco. I do want to visit all the museums because I was told that they have great collections in Washington.
Melissa Chiu: It is a city of major museums. So all the national museums are there.
Pearl Lam: Does politics come and come into play.
Melissa Chiu: Rarely. For us we designate our own programme and really have an independent. We have an independent board, so it’s a good environment. We’re the only museum that’s exclusively focused on modern contemporary art within that ecology. So it gives us an enormous amount of freedom.
Pearl Lam: Wow.
Melissa Chiu: Yeah.
Pearl Lam: Okay. Thank you.
Melissa Chiu: What a delight.
Pearl Lam: It is exciting because I haven’t seen you for such a long time.
