2025 Honoree Dr. Jay Xu

The Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

Dr. Jay Xu has had forty years of international museum experience as a research scholar, curator, and museum director, having previously worked at Shanghai Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Seattle Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago before he became the first Chinese American director in a major US art museum in 2008.

Dr. Xu earned his PhD at Princeton University. His academic work has earned a number of awards, including the prestigious Shimada Prize for Outstanding Publication in East Asian Art. The diverse range of Chinese art exhibitions that he curated include the landmark exhibition Treasures from a Lost Civilization: Ancient Chinese Art from Sichuan, which featured the lost civilization of Sanxingdui, the primary subject of his research. As a museum director, he spearheaded to successful conclusion by 2020 the Transformation Project at the Asian Art Museum, which involved facility expansion and renovation and artistic innovation, all underwritten by a $100 million campaign that he led.

In 2010, Dr. Xu was elected a member of Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization. In 2015, he became the first museum director of Asian descent elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences founded by the second president John Adams in 1780.

In 2022, Dr. Xu was appointed to serve on the US Congressional Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture. In 2024, Dr. Xu was elected to the governing board of the American Alliance of Museums, which is the only organization in the United States representing the entire museum field.