Jay Xu

Jay Xu (Chinese:许杰; born 1963)^[1] is a Chinese-born American museum director, art historian, and curator.^[2] He was the first Chinese-American curator of a major museum in the United States, serving as director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco from 2008 to 2025.^[3][4][5]

Jay Xu was born in 1963 in Shanghai, China.^[6][7] He attended Shanghai University. Xu worked as an assistant to the museum director Ma Chengyuan at the Shanghai Museum.^[8] Later, due to work reasons, he came into contact with Robert Bagley, a professor at Princeton University who came to Shanghai for academic exchanges.

Xu moved to the United States in 1990, pursuing a M.A. degree and PhD program at Princeton University.^[9] After graduation, he worked as a research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from 1995 until 1996.^[8] Xu worked as the curator of Chinese art at the Seattle Art Museum from 1996 to 2003; and as the head of the Asian art department and chairman of the Department of Asian and Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago from 2003 to 2006.^[8][9]

Since June 2008, Xu has served as the director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, succeeding Emily Sano.^[8] Under his leadership, the Asian Art Museum avoided a financial crisis,^[10] growing its collection with more than 2,200 new art acquisitions and hosting at least 100 exhibitions.^[8] In 2017, Xu led a fundraising campaign to fund the museum's building renovation and expansion.^[11][8][12] In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the museum removed the bust of Avery Brundage, someone accused of being a Nazi sympathizer and a racist.^[13][14] During this time, the museum also decided to critically examine the provenance of the artwork in the collection.^[13]

في أبريل 2023، أعلن شو عن خطط للتنحي عن منصبه في متحف الفن الآسيوي في عام 2025، على أن تحل سويونغ لي محله رسميًا كمديرة ورئيسة تنفيذية في يناير 2025. ^{[ 15 ] [ 16 ] [ 17 ]}