Orianna Cacchione named first Curator of Global Contemporary Art

last edited on Mon. June 26 2017

Alison Gass, the Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum of Art, is pleased to announce the appointment of Orianna Cacchione to the newly created position of Curator of Global Contemporary Art. In this new role, Cacchione will focus on collections and exhibition projects at the Smart Museum that deal with the art of today through an international lens, with a focus on the art of East Asia.

“I am thrilled that Orianna will be joining the Smart and the University of Chicago community. We look forward to her bringing her deep art historical knowledge and curatorial expertise to a diverse spectrum of globally focused projects,” said Gass.

Cacchione is currently completing a curatorial fellowship in Contemporary East Asian Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her curatorial practice is committed to expanding the canon of contemporary art to respond to the global circulations of art and ideas. At the Art Institute of Chicago, Cacchione was responsible for expanding the museum’s collection of contemporary art from East Asia, leading to transformative acquisitions of artworks from China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. She recently curated the exhibition, Zhang Peili: Record. Repeat. (on view through July 9, 2017), the first major exhibition of the pioneering video artist at an American museum.

Prior to joining the Art Institute, Cacchione was a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Beijing, China. In Beijing, she was a co-organizer of the artist-run project space, HomeShop and co-curated the archival presentation, The Grin without the Cat, at Pace Beijing. In 2016, Cacchione participated in the Japan Foundation’s Curatorial Exchange.

Cacchione holds a Ph.D in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the University of California, San Diego, a MA with Distinction from Goldsmiths College, and a BA from the University of Michigan. Her scholarly research explores the transnational, cross-geographic flows of art and art history that characterize the global art world. Her writing has been published in The Journal of Art Historiography and Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. She has presented her research at the Guggenheim, OCAT Xi’an, the College Art Association, Freie University, Academia Sinica, the Association of Asian Studies, and the World History Association. She has taught art history courses at the University of California, San Diego and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.     

She will officially begin at the Smart on July 10, 2017.

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