Stephanie Hueon Tung, Byrne Family Curator of Photography

Stephanie Tung leads the interpretation and presentation of the museum’s growing photography collection, which spans the 19th century through today. A specialist in the history of photography of China, her research focuses on transnational art exchanges, global modernism, translation studies and notions of artistic labor. Formerly serving as PEM’s Assistant Curator and then Associate Curator with a focus on photography, Tung was instrumental in shepherding the 2020 acquisition of approximately 1,600 photographs by artists with ties to East Asia, a gift made possible through the generosity of the Joy of Giving Something Foundation.

Tung served as co-curator or assistant curator for As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic; After Hope: Videos of Resistance; Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China; and A Lasting Memento: John Thomson’s Photographs Along the River Min.

Prior to joining PEM in 2018, Tung worked at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing as a curator and director of international affairs. She has published widely on photography and contemporary art from China, including as a contributor to Aperture and the Trans-Asia Photography Review and as a contributing author to The Chinese Photobook (Aperture, 2015) and Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World (Guggenheim, 2017). Her most recent book, Ai Weiwei: Beijing 1993–2003 (MIT Press, 2019), was co-authored with Ai Weiwei and John Tancock and serves as a continuation of Ai Weiwei: New York 1983–1993, for which she also served as lead researcher.

Tung holds a B.A. in Literature and History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and an M.A. in Art and Archeology from Princeton University. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Princeton’s Art and Archeology program with her dissertation, Pictorial China: Art Photography in the Republican Era, 1923–1929.

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