Philadelphia Museum of Art appoints Hiromi Kinoshita associate curator of Chinese Art

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, today announced the appointment of Hiromi Kinoshita as Associate Curator of Chinese Art in the Department of East Asian Art. Currently Assistant Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Dr. Kinoshita will join the staff on April 1, 2012. She will be responsible for the care and utilization of the Museum’s extensive holdings of Chinese art.

“Hiromi Kinoshita brings great promise to the stewardship of a significant part of our collection at an important moment in the history of this institution,” said Rub.

“This position has recently been endowed by an anonymous donor whose gift was matched by a grant from the Chairman Emeritus of our Board of Trustees, Gerry Lenfest, and his wife, Marguerite. We are grateful to these individuals for their generosity and for the opportunity this gives us to focus—through reinstallation, research, and programming—on an area that needs more attention. In Dr. Kinoshita, we have found an individual with significant curatorial experience and a broad knowledge of the field whose skills perfectly match our needs. With this appointment also comes the opportunity also to broaden the Museum’s outreach to diverse communities in the city and region, especially Philadelphia’s large and vibrant Chinese community.”

Prior to her current position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Dr. Kinoshita served as consulting curator at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta for The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army (2008-09), an exhibition that originated in London at the British Museum where Dr. Kinoshita had served as Assistant Curator (2006-2008) and authored the essay, Qin Palaces and Architecture, for the catalogue. Before her service at the British Museum, she was co-curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, of the Qing exhibition China: The Three Emperors (1662-1795) and catalogue contributor. Earlier in her career Dr. Kinoshita served as a research assistant for Professor Michael Sullivan at Oxford and as Gallery Manager for J. J. Lally & Co. Oriental Art in New York.

Dr. Kinoshita will become a member of the Museum’s Department of East Asian Art under the leadership of Dr. Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and Senior Curator of East Asian Art. “I am delighted that we have found in Hiromi a distinguished scholar who will bring energy, creativity and insight to our remarkable holdings in this field,” said Dr. Fischer.

Commented Dr. Kinoshita, “I am excited to come to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and look forward to researching the collection, re-installing the galleries and making the collection more accessible through new programs. I am also impressed with the spirit of the staff, the donors, and what the community of Philadelphia means to the Museum.”

Dr. Kinoshita was born in Hong Kong to a Chinese mother and a Japanese-Canadian father. She received her BA degree from Wellesley College (1992) with a dual concentration in Art History and Chinese, a postgraduate diploma in Asian art at Sotheby’s Institute at the University of London (1992), and earned her PhD in Chinese Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford (2006). Her dissertation was on the hybrid burial practices of the Liao Khitan elite (907–1125).

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