NEW YORK, NY.- Japan Society has announced the appointment of Yukie Kamiya as Director of Japan Society Gallery. A specialist in Japanese contemporary art, Ms. Kamiya has been Chief Curator at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MoCA), Japan, since 2007, where she developed a wide range of contemporary Japanese and international art exhibitions. She will officially step into her position at Japan Society on November 16, 2015.

"Japan Society has always been known for presenting challenging, thought provoking and very specialized material, through exhibitions and programming," said Kamiya upon her appointment. "We hope to expand on these core values of the institution, and to convey Japanese art and culture to a broader New York, American, and a global audience."

Kamiya began her professional career at the New Museum, serving as Adjunct and Associate Curator from 2003 to 2006. She came to New York following completion of the De Apeel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam and graduation from Waseda University, Tokyo, (2008-2013), where she has since taught as visiting lecturer in art. Kamiya has served as an advisor or jury member for the Bunkacho Japan Media Arts Festival, DAAD Artist-in-Berlin, Asian Cultural Council Visual Arts Grant, and The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Initiate, among other programs. She is a prolific author, having written numerous peer-reviewed articles and exhibitions catalogues, including "Afterall, Flash Art" in BT Magazine, Ravaged-Art and Culture in Times of Conflict (Mercatorfonds, 2014), 2013 California-Paciffic Triennial (Orange County Museum, 2013), Simon Starling –Project for Masquerade Hiroshima (Hiroshima MoCA, 2011), and Creamer –Contemporary Art in Culture (Phaidon, 2010).

In recent years, Kamiya’s curatorial projects have widely focused on contemporary art from the Asia region, organizing acclaimed monographic presentations of the works of Yoko Ono (2011), Cai Guo Qiang (2008), Do Ho Suh (2012), Tadasu Takamine (2011), Tsuyoshi Ozawa (2009), Jirō Takamatsu (2009), and Simon Starling (2011), and group exhibitions such as When Documents Become Form (2015), Imaginative Geometry (2014), Site: Place of Memories, Spaces with Potential (2013), Building: Art in Relation to Architecture (2012), and More of an Activity: The Artists as Choreographers (2010) all at the Hiroshima MoCA.

In addition to acclaim for the recent Re:Quest Japanese Contemporary Art since the 1970s (2013) at the Museum of Art, Seoul National University, Korea, which she co-curated, Kamiya won the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize for Yoko Ono-The Road of Hope, Curator (2011), and received the Academic Prize, Foundation for Advancement of the Arts at National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, for Simon Starling: Project for a Masquerade (Hiroshima) (2011) both at Hiroshima MOCA. Kamiya has been selected as the 2016 Curator of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video at the Jewish Museum.

"With her unique combination of scholarship, curatorial experience, and leadership skills, Kamiya is ideally suited to develop a groundbreaking course for the future of the Japan Society Gallery," said Motoatsu Sakurai, President of Japan Society upon the announcement. "We expect her exciting new creative vision as Director of the Japan Society Gallery will greatly expand Japan Society’s status as one of America’s premier institutions for exhibitions of Japanese art."

"In my role at the Japan Society, I look forward to making the Gallery a venue for exploring visual arts which express Japan’s inherent global temperament – its links to the U.S., to its neighboring nations in Asia, as well as to Europe and Latin America. With its unique position in New York City, Japan Society Gallery can present Japanese art – both traditional and contemporary – from a new perspective, one that considers the passing of time as a single, continuous flow of ideas,” said Kamiya. "Through art and culture, the Japan Society Gallery will be a platform which showcases programs that cultivate vigorous, interactive relationships between Japan and other nations, and that continue to stand out for their abundance of intellectual stimulation and imagination."