Picture this: it is the early 1990s and Melissa Chiu, prospective PhD student at the University of Western Sydney, is talking to one of her supervising professors.

She already has a BA (Art History) from the university and an MA (Arts Administration) from the University of New South Wales. Chiu is intent on the topic of her doctorate dissertation being Chinese contemporary art in the diaspora.

The professor says the young woman has lost leave of her senses. “She told me I was crazy, and that I should really consider subjects that had a greater degree of professional opportunities,” Chiu recalls. “She tried desperately to convince me otherwise. She told me I would never get a job.”

Dr Chiu (yes, with her thesis topic being Chinese contemporary art in the diaspora), relates the story some years later to a graduate art history class at New York University. She is addressing the class from her position as the Museum Director of the prestigious Asia Society in New York. She is also the society’s vice president of Global Art Programs and is responsible for the exhibitions at its Park Avenue museum in New York and at its recently opened museums in Houston and Hong Kong.

She has written several seminal books, regularly speaks at major events and major universities and is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading authorities on modern and contemporary Asian art.

Asian art is such big business now that late last year the French research company Artprice announced that the world’s top auction-earning artist of the year was Chinese artist Zhang Daqian, whose works generated US$506.7 million in auction revenue in 2011. Compatriot Qi Baishi was second with US$445.1 million, followed by names more familiar to the uninformed Westerner, Andy Warhol (US$324.8 million) and Pablo Picasso (US$311.6 million). Another Chinese artist, Xu Beihong was fifth with US$212.9 million.

In May 2011, Zhang’s 1947 work Lotus and Mandarin Ducks was sold for US$24.5 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong – a record for the artist.

This pivotal shift only occurred last year, with Picasso holding top billing on Artprice every year except one since 1997. The sole exception was 2007 when Warhol relegated the Spanish impressionist to second place.

Now it has all changed, with the 2011 results reflecting both the growing wealth of Chinese collectors and the burgeoning worldwide interest in Asian art, neither of which, to give Chiu’s professor her due, were evident to most people in the early 1990s.

Chiu believes that the strong museum infrastructure in Australia equips Australians to handle the move to a similarly strong infrastructure in the US

But Chiu isn’t most people.

Born in Darwin, she is the daughter of a dentist father and a dental assistant turned social worker mother. The family moved to Sydney when she was around 12, where Chiu completed most of her education. Her interest in art seems to stem more from nature, rather than nurture.

“Neither of my parents were involved in the creative fields, but they encouraged me,” she says. “I think because I showed an interest in this area early on, they encouraged me to pursue it.”

Unusually, that interest was always on what could be called the more prosaic side of art.

“I became interested in the arts and wanted to find a way of working in the arts that was not necessarily based on being an artist, so that was one of the reasons I wanted to do an Art History degree.

“I was very interested in working in museums from the very beginning, so although one of my first jobs was in a gallery, soon after I went to work in the non-profit sector at a contemporary arts centre called Art Space.

“So I think I was more interested always in the kind of more – I wouldn’t say academic – but in the contents side of arts rather than in the commercial side.”

Two thousand years on, Chiu, with her Chinese-Australian heritage and her voyage from Darwin to New York and beyond, embodies the modern global culture. Where she ends up is anyone’s guess but one thing is for sure: the expert in contemporary Asian art will never be out of a job.  

While studying at university Chiu took every opportunity to do internships in order to give herself an idea of just what part of the art world she was best suited to.

“People come to me at the end of their degrees and ask what they should do, and I say: Find out where your true interest lies through doing an internship because that’s how you get a real insider’s view.”

After doing internships “with just about every organisation in Sydney”, Chiu was offered a job at Art Space. “That’s something else I tell graduates. If you are really good then the likelihood of you finding a job after your internship is pretty high because people don’t want to let you go.”

Chiu believes the political and social atmosphere prevailing in Australia in the early 1990s fostered her interest in Asian art.

“If anything, I would say that Australia is very supportive of people at the beginning of their careers, there’s a real openness.”

“My interest really commenced from growing up in a very particular environment in Australia. It was a time when [Prime Minister] Paul Keating was involved in APEC [the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum] and had directed an enormous amount of government focus on Australia being part of Asia.”

“I think I would have to say that seeing a great work of art is incredibly inspiring… seeing a compelling, poignant work that speaks to our time, that says something about current issues, or politics, or how an artist was experiencing the world around them I think is an incredible experience. And I think that’s what really probably drew me to this field.”

After working as an independent curator, Chiu in 1996 joined the newly established Asia-Australia Arts Centre (also known as Gallery 4A) in Sydney as its inaugural director. She stayed in that position until 2001, when she moved to New York.

Aaron Seeto, the current director of the Asia-Australia Arts Centre – now named the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art – well remembers Chiu. “She employed me when I was still a student,” he recalls. “She was incredibly charismatic and she and others were able to build an organisation when there was much less interest in the area of Asian art.

“She was visionary in that she understood what was about to happen.”

Seeto says Chiu still keeps in contact with Gallery 4A and they have been involved in a number of joint enterprises with Asia Society. “She’s held in very high regard,” he says. “Both in arts circles and more broadly.”

The move to America came about through one of those happenstance events that so often dictate people’s futures.

An exhibition of Chinese art, organised through Asia Society, was opening at the National Gallery in Canberra and Chiu, along with a museum director from Asia Society, was invited to discuss the exhibition on Australian radio.

“That’s where I first met [the director]. We kept in touch after that and she said that there was a newly endowed position that Asia Society was creating and asked if I would be interested.”

The position was as curator of contemporary Asian and Asian American art – the first position of its kind in an American museum.

“The Asia Society had really been one of the first organisations, first museums, in the US to start with a contemporary art program and so I was interested in being a part of that. It was an exciting opportunity,” Chiu says. “They were also planning to reopen a newly renovated building at that same time so I felt like there was a real opportunity to be able to work on a larger scale than I had been able to in America.”

Chiu believes that the strong museum infrastructure in Australia equips Australians to handle the move to a similarly strong infrastructure in the US.

She also appreciated the opportunities she had been given at a young age in Australia.

“I think Australia provides opportunities for younger people that are not always apparent in New York. I found that when I arrived in New York I had a lot more professional experience. I had been able to do a lot more for my age than others would have been able to had they been based here in New York for a long time.

“If anything, I would say that Australia is very supportive of people at the beginning of their careers, there’s a real openness.”

In 2004, Chiu was promoted to her present position and counts among her marquee moments last year’s exhibition of Buddhist art antiquities from Pakistan and an exhibition of Chinese revolutionary art from the cultural revolution.

Both had their particular problems and sensibilities.

“When I spoke to a number of mid-career Chinese artists, they all said to me that if you wanted to understand their work you had to go back to the cultural revolution when they were growing up, which was the formative period,” Chiu says.

“It was actually one of the first shows on this subject ever and we thought that it was an important part of China’s history that is very influential to what is going on today.”

The exhibition featured artworks from the ancient Gandhāra civilisation in Northern Pakistan, a distinctive style which developed out of a merger of Greek, Syrian, Persian and Indian artistic influence.

The result was a landmark three-month show about which the New York Times completed a long, glowing review by saying that the exhibition “pulses with human warmth. That’s one of the things we go to great art for, though in this case, and against very long odds, some of that great art has come to us.”

At the time Chiu was quoted as saying that the Asia Society’s exhibition reflected a reappraisal that is currently underway in the entire discipline of art history. “Gandhāran art has undergone a new appreciation now with scholarship being developed around the idea of a global culture rather than a national culture,” she explained.

Two thousand years on, Chiu, with her Chinese-Australian heritage and her voyage from Darwin to New York and beyond, embodies the modern global culture. Where she ends up is anyone’s guess but one thing is for sure: the expert in contemporary Asian art will never be out of a job.  

www.asiasociety.org