The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto has announced that Xiaoyu Weng, who is currently associate curator of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, will join the institution as the new curator in modern and contemporary art this summer.
During her time at the Guggenheim, Weng curated some critically acclaimed shows including Tales of Our Time (2016–17) and One Hand Clapping (2018), the latter focusing on globalisation and Chinese art. Under her leadership, the museum’s Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative commissioned 27 new works, all of which entered the institution’s permanent collection. From 2018 to 2019, Weng served as curator of the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and from 2010 to 2015, she was Director of Asia Programs at the Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco and Paris, where she organised exhibitions for artists including Robert Zhao Renhui, Ming Wong and Ho Tzu Nyen. A prolific writer, Weng is also a guest editor of Heichi magazine, a bilingual digital forum for visual culture exchange in the Chinese-speaking world and internationally.
Speaking about Weng’s appointment AGO’s deputy director and chief curator Julian Cox said: ‘Xiaoyu’s uniquely international experience and vision, and her longstanding engagement in expanding the art historical canon will help us further our goals of leading global conversations from Toronto. She will also help us put Canadian artists on the global stage and shape the presentation of our Collection in dynamic new ways.’
