Presenting Chinese Avant-Garde Art in the United States: The Curatorial Approach of Wu Hung and Gao Minglu at the Turn of the Millennium

In the late 1990s, Chinese avant-garde not only confronted changes in artistic concepts and social values, but also surprised the international artworld. It was a series of exhibitions on Chinese avant-garde art held in North America and Europe that reflected the increased attention from the West to Chinese contemporary art during the moment. In those exhibitions overseas, Chinese curators played a significant role in creating new ways in which the Western audience came to experience the visual realm of China. Especially in the United States, the two Chinese art historians and curators, Wu Hung and Gao Minglu, attempted to successfully promote Chinese avant-garde art based on their nomadic experiences, artistic visions, and distinctive curatorial approaches. Supported by Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and funded by Asia Art Society and Smart Gallery, the two academic curators attempted to suggest a complex image of the Chinese society under the impressive transformation by presenting artworks of both leading and emerging contemporary Chinese artists. This paper examines Gao’s “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” (1997), Wu’s “Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of 20th Century” (1999) and “Canceled: Exhibiting Experimental Art in China” (2000), in order to retrace the two figures’ curatorial practices in North America at the turn of the millennium. The close analysis of the three exhibitions will offer a better understanding of the social environment that shaped both their curatorial concepts and the development of Chinese avant-garde art during the late 1990s.