Doryun Chong, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA, is the recipient of the first Gerrit Lansing Independent Vision Award. This award has been inaugurated to reflect ICI’s commitment to supporting international curators early in their careers who have shown exceptional creativity and prescience in their exhibition-making, research, and related writing.
Chong was selected to receive the Independent Vision Award for the recent exhibitions he has curated and co-curated in a range of venues nationally and internationally, including Bruce Nauman: Days (MoMA, 2010); Brinkmanship: Park Chan-Kyong and Sean Snyder (REDCAT, 2010) with Clara Kim; Haegue Yang: Integrity of the Insider (Walker Art Center, 2009–10); Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis (Walker Art Center, 2008-9); Brave New Worlds (Walker Art Center, 2007) with Yasmil Raymond; and the 2006 Busan Biennial. Through these exhibitions Chong has not only demonstrated multiple, global understandings of artworks and their contexts, but also an unusual eloquence in the possibilities of display and discourse. Chong’s innovative research skills draw on several Asian and Romance languages and his training in Western European and East Asian philosophy and art history. Considered the top translator of writing on contemporary art from Korea, Chong is also responsible for the groundbreaking lexicon on artist Huang Yong Ping’s complex web of meanings, intentions, history, conflict, and culture. Chong is currently Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA. Prior to this, Chong was a curator in the Visual Arts department at the Walker Art Center from 2003 to 2009.
This interview with Chong by ICI’s Executive Director Kate Fowle focuses on his practice to date from his academic training and how he got into exhibition-making to his recent move to MoMA. In the interview, Chong analyzes what it means for him to be an international curator today, discussing in depth his research methodologies and the complex processes of translation he undertakes in his exhibitions with artists like Tetsumi Kudo, Huang Yong Ping, and Sean Snyder. Ultimately his practice is grounded in an understanding that “context is rarely singular or an aggregation of multiples, but almost always syncretic, interpenetrating, and hybrid, and and that by understanding that, a curator could potentially also help an artist extend his or her practice as a consequence.”
