SAN DIEGO, CA.- The San Diego Museum of Art has hired Diana Y. Chou, Ph.D., as the Museum’s Associate Curator of East Asian Art. Chou will begin her role on June 29, 2016. Working with the Museum’s world-renowned permanent collection of East Asian art, Chou will oversee approximately 7,000 works, a selection of which is currently on view in Brush and Ink: Chinese Paintings from The San Diego Museum of Art Selected by Pan Gongkai. She will also manage the development of installations and related exhibitions, and contribute to the Museum’s provenance research and art acquisition programs.

Chou brings more than 15 years of museum curatorial and academic teaching experience, with expertise spanning Chinese and Japanese art from the medieval to modern periods. She has organized collections and exhibitions of Japanese and Chinese art for several museums in the United States and Taiwan, including the Cleveland State University Art Galleries, Dayton Art Institute, National Museum of History, Taipei, and Museum of World Religions, Taipei.

Chou served as a consultant for the Carnegie Museum of Art in their reinstallation of their Asian Galleries and the ASIANetwork’s project Asian Art in the Undergraduate Curriculum, and has received several fellowships and awards for her dedication to East Asian art, including two Summer Institute grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“Ms. Chou’s breadth of experience and depth of scholarship on Chinese and Japanese art are impressive,” said Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director of The San Diego Museum of Art. “She is a great complement to our dynamic curatorial team, and we are honored to welcome her to the Museum.”

A native of Taiwan, Chou received her Master of Arts in Japanese Art History from Northern Illinois University, and her Ph.D. in Chinese Art History from the University of Kansas. She is fluent in Mandarin and Classical Chinese, and proficient in Japanese.