CURATORIAL COMMITTEE
A distinguished curatorial committee, composed of leading curators from institutions across North America and Asia, carefully selects the awardee, ensuring artistic excellence and innovation.
Rita Gonzalez
Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Rita Gonzalez is the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she has curated Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement; Asco: Elite of the Obscure; Lost Line: Contemporary Art from the Collection; Agnès Varda in Californialand, and In Production: Art and the Studio System, among other exhibitions and programs. Gonzalez curated L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, an exhibition that featured sixty gifts and marked the culmination of LACMA’s 50th anniversary year. From 1997–1999, she was the Lila Wallace Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. She was on the curatorial team for Prospect 3 New Orleans and part of the curatorial teams for the first Current L.A. Biennial in 2016 and the Gwangju Biennale in 2018.
Dr. Deepanjana Klein
Director of Acquisitions and Development, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Dr. Deepanjana Klein has been the Director of Acquisitions and Development at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) since 2022. She leads the museum’s acquisition strategy, focusing on collecting, preserving, and showcasing art from the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora, spanning the 2nd century CE to the present. Under her leadership, KNMA has strengthened global collaborations, amplifying the visibility of Indian and South Asian artists worldwide. With nearly 15 years as International Head of Modern, Contemporary, and Classical Indian and Southeast Asian Art at Christie’s, Dr. Klein brings unparalleled expertise to her role. She has also taught art history and theory at leading institutions, including the Leicester School of Architecture and the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute. Dr. Klein holds a PhD in Indian Art History from De Montfort University, England. Her extensive contributions include work in the Encyclopaedia of Sculpture and academic journals. A Mellon Foundation grant supported her documentation of the Ellora cave temples, which is the focus of her upcoming book.
Yuko Hasegawa
Curator and Art Critic
Yuko Hasegawa is a curator and art critic. She currently holds positions as Visiting Professor at Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University, in “Curatorial Theory and Practice”; Program Director of Art & Design at the International House of Japan; Visiting Professor at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature; and Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University of the Arts. She was formerly the Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. She has been honored with the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award (2020), the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2015), the Order of Cultural Merit (Brazil, 2017), and the Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France, 2024). Hasegawa has curated numerous biennales in Istanbul (2001), Shanghai (2002), São Paulo (2010), Sharjah (2013), Moscow (2017), and Thailand (2021), and international exhibitions including Japanorama: A New Vision on Art Since 1970 at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2017), and Fukami: A Plunge into Japanese Aesthetics in Paris (2018). Her most recent publication is Art and New Ecology: Anthropocene as Dithering Time (Ibun-sha, 2022).
