Jessica S. Hong (Flanders Creative)
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art begins the new year with a freshly appointed chief curator. Jessica S. Hong brings two decades of savvy experience and a formidable curatorial resume to the position. In her most recent post as senior curator of modern and contemporary art at the Toledo Museum of Art, Hong contributed greatly to broadening art historical narratives at the institution through her exhibitions and acquisitions.
Hong’s artist-centered curatorial practice is sensitive to community building. This can be seen in her recent projects with a fascinating roster of contemporary artists. Earlier in 2024, Hong collaborated with Korean-American sculptor Jean Shin on a socially and environmentally engaged outdoor commission entitled “Perch.” Shin’s outdoor installation of reclaimed trees and salvaged copper was designed to aid in monitoring bobolink bird populations through a community science project on the site of the America’s oldest working farm.
Other recent projects point to Hong’s comfort level with contemporary moving image art, sci-art and digital media. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s site specific, immersive installation “Machine Auguries: Toledo” employed generative artificial intelligence to learn the field recordings of wild birds and created a chorus of real and synthetic bird calls timed to an artificial dawn. The work reflected on the human impact of migrating birds with cutting-edge methods of machine learning.
Hong helped initiate a digital artist residency at her former museum and oversaw acquisition of TMA’s first digital artwork, an NFT on blockchain, by self-taught Nigerian crypto-artist Osinachi. Toledo Museum of Art made headlines recently when they were the first art museum in the United States to acquire a digital artwork using cryptocurrency. Indeed, the future of art has arrived, and a few institutions are dipping their toes in it. Perhaps Kansas City audiences can anticipate some innovative new projects that bridge the gap between traditional visual arts and the rapidly emerging digital art ecosystem of Web3.
Before her time in Toledo, Hong built an impressive resume at several East Coast institutions including stops at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, as well as curatorial posts at museums at Harvard and Dartmouth Colleges.
She has worked with artists from almost every continent, such as multimedia installation artists Shannon Te Ao, whose work is grounded in Indigenous Maori poetics, and Singapore’s Ho Tzu Nyen, who explores the experience of modernity in Asia. Alternatively, she produced exhibitions for artists including Pakistani American sculptor Huma Bhabha, African American filmmaker Arthur Jafa and installation artist Mark Dion. It’s plain to see that Hong has a feel for conceptually hefty artists who embrace new and varied media of the moment.
Hong’s interest in relationship building and collaborative artist strategies within contemporary ceramics will find its form in Kemper’s multi-artist exhibition “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Slated for September 2025, the exhibition promises a new commission by Raven Halfmoon, known for her monumental hand built ceramic sculptures informed by her Caddo heritage.
As the first major hire of executive director Jessica May’s tenure, Hong’s appointment signals a serious and forward-thinking period for Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. This potent duo stands to expand the museum’s curatorial vision while renewing their community engagement as the world of contemporary art moves toward mid-century.
