Draft:Irene Mei Zhi Shum

About:
Irene Mei Zhi Shum is a Chinese-American curator and arts executive based in New York City. She gained recognition for site specific art commissions and the activation of historic sites with contemporary art. . Shum is the Vice President of the Williamsburg Biannual, an artist space in Brooklyn. She serves on the Visual Arts Panel for the New York State Council on the Arts and Advisory Board for Project 14C, an artist residency program in Jersey City.

Other Names:
Irene Mei Zhi Shum’s Chinese name is 沈美芝. She is a great grand-daughter and direct descendant of Chinese military general Shen Hongying (沈鴻英) of Old Guangxi Clique during the Republic of China (1912–1949) from Hong Kong. Shum was married from 2006 to 2011, and during this period, she was cited and published as both Irene Allen and Irene Shum Allen.

= Education: = Irene Shum holds a Bachelor of Arts (1994) in Architecture and Art History from Barnard College of Columbia University; a certificate of architecture (1998) from Fontainebleau Schools, where she was awarded the Prix de Ville de Fontainebleau; and a Masters of Architecture (2000) from Yale University where she studied under Zaha Hadid.

= Early Career: = Irene Shum started her career as an Urban Corps Intern for the Department of City Planning of the City of New York contributing to the comprehensive waterfront plan published in 1992 and Multicultural Intern at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the exhibition Temporarily Possessed: The Semi-Permanent Collection (1995) that critically examined museum collection and exhibitions practices on the art market and artists’ careers. She worked at The Whitney Museum of American Art and the National University of Singapore, before joining the Museum of Modern Art in the Department of Architecture and Design as a curatorial assistant reporting directly to Architecture Curator and Senior Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs Peter Reed, organizing MoMA’s first survey on landscape architecture and urban design, Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape (2005).

= Glass House to Present = Shum established her reputation as the inaugural curator of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Philip Johnson Glass House  after organizing Veil      by Fujiko Nakaya  ; Narcissus Garden    and Dots Obsession     by Yayoi Kusama ; and Glass    , a recorded performance by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai (who performs as alva noto). Her focus on “legacy” and advocacy for parity between intangible and tangible heritage in the field of historic preservation allowed her to introduce contemporary art into the historic context by preserving the “spirit” of the Glass House’s original occupants, architect Philip Johnson and curator David Whitney, who were well-known twentieth-century patrons of the arts. This innovative approach earned her support from artists whom Johnson collected, including Frank Stella , Julian Schnabel    , and  Bruce Nauman.

Additionally, Shum supported new research and scholarship, including Mark Lamster’s 2018 biography of Philip Johnson, The Man in the Glass House (Little Brown) as well as the rediscovery of Johnson’s lost Giacometti sculpture. Her 2011 biography on David Whitney drew the attention of The Menil Collection, where Whitney served as a trustee; and she was brought on as the associate curator of contemporary art in 2018. In 2020, she was appointed the executive director of Art In General  to restructure the organization, which was led by Holly Block for 18 years but lost its primary source of funding, after a private equity group acquired its corporate benefactor in 2014. Shum and the board of directors voted to sunset the organization, when it could no longer withstand the prolonged financial constriction of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. Shum organized commemorative programs and donated its archives to the Smithsonian Archives for American Art, a full set of its publications to NYU Libraries, and remaining unsold inventory to the Art Resources Transfer In 2021 and 2022, Shum organized projects as a guest curator for Mana Contemporary with its executive director Kele McComsey, including Land of the Free  and The You Voice before co-founding the Williamsburg Biannual, an artist space in Brooklyn, New York in 2023.

= Controversy = Shum’s appointment to the Menil in 2018 was cited in Artnet as an example of the slow progress in gender and racial diversity in the arts, as “white people made up 74 percent of senior staff in New York cultural institutions” and “85 percent of curators across the U.S..

= See Also: = Glass (Composition)

Fujiko Nakaya

Art in General

List of Chinese Americans

List of Asian Americans

= External Links: = Irene Shum

Irene Mei Zhi Shum at Americans for the Arts

Irene Mei Zhi Shum at  The Brooklyn Rail

Williamsburg Biannual