Kevin B. Chen

Background

About Kevin B. Chen

Visual artist, curator, and educator Kevin B. Chen currently serves as Curator at the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, faculty at San Francisco State University and California College of the Arts, and a member of Recology's Artist in Residence Program Advisory Board and Root Division's Curatorial Committee. He recently served as co-chair for the City of Oakland's Public Art Advisory Committee, managed the de Young Museum’s Artist Residency Program and Public Programs, and taught at Stanford University and Mills College. As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions and programs for Headlands Center for the Arts, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, University of Nevada Reno, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Art Institute, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SOMArts Cultural Center, and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco & Kearny Street Workshop. His curatorial work has been reviewed in publications nationally, including Art in America, afterimage: the journal of media arts and cultural criticism, Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, Hyperallergic, Bidoun Magazine, and Bitch Magazine. He has delivered lectures and participated in panel discussions at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, BAMPFA, UC Santa Cruz, and the Asian Art Museum, and at annual conferences for Americans for the Arts and California Association of Museums. He was Program Director of Visual Arts at Intersection for the Arts for over 15 years, where he curated over 70 exhibitions and hundreds of public programs, including solo exhibitions by Lebbeus Woods, Hasan Elahi, Margaret Harrison, Ala Ebtekar, Jenny Odell, Binh Danh, Taraneh Hemami, Jamex & Einar de la Torre, Conrad Atkinson, Weston Teruya & Michele Carlson, Victor Cartagena, and Marcos Ramírez ERRE. He has been a funding and residency panelist for Creative Capital Foundation, Multi-Arts Production Fund, Alliance of Artists Communities, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Creative Work Fund, City of San Jose, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His own artwork has been exhibited locally at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Southern Exposure, Asian Art Museum, Palo Alto Art Center, and nationally at Angel’s Gate Cultural Center (San Pedro, CA), Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL), Bruno David Gallery (St. Louis, MO), and The Kitchen (New York, NY). He received his BA from Columbia University in Psychology and East Asian Languages & Cultures and is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery.