ST. LOUIS, MO.- Philip Hu has been promoted to curator of Asian art, the Saint Louis Art Museum announced today.

Since joining the Museum in 2006, Hu has curated numerous gallery rotations and several exhibitions, including Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan, which closes January 8. In addition to editing that exhibition’s scholarly catalogue, Hu authored Later Chinese Bronzes: The Saint Louis Art Museum and Robert E. Kresko Collections and contributed extensively to Beyond Golden Clouds: Japanese Screens from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

In addition, Hu has overseen the growth of the museum’s Asian art collection through several acquisitions, including the 2010 gift of nearly 1,400 Japanese prints and related works by Charles and Rosalyn Lowenhaupt and the 2014 gift of more than 200 works of Asian art from the estate of Edith J. and C.C. Johnson Spink.

“Philip has transformed the presentation of Asian art in the Museum’s galleries,” said Brent R. Benjamin, the Barbara B. Taylor Director of the Saint Louis Art Museum. “He has initiated the Museum’s first gallery for Korean art; reconceived the Museum’s presentations of ancient Chinese jades and bronzes, Chinese ceramics, and South Asian and Himalayan art; and conceived new presentations of Islamic art as well as of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain.”

Hu holds a bachelor of arts in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley; a master of architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a master of arts in Chinese painting and calligraphy from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he is currently a doctoral candidate. Prior to coming to St. Louis, Hu was adjunct professor of fine arts at New York University and Freeman Foundation Fellow and Visiting Instructor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.