LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announce the appointments of Stephen Little to the position of department head and curator of Chinese and Korean art, as well as Christina Yu to the role of assistant curator of Chinese art. Previously, Little was employed as director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts ,while Yu is completing graduate work for her PhD at the University of Chicago and working at Chambers Fine Art in New York and Beijing.

LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan noted, “Stephen Little’s wide-ranging experience and expertise in the field of Asian art will make him a tremendous asset to the curatorial team at LACMA. We look forward to the ways in which he and Christina Yu will engage with both our collection and Los Angeles’ vast Chinese and Korean communities.”

An authority on East Asian art, Little’s research interests include Chinese and Japanese painting, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese ceramics, and the classical arts of Southeast Asia. Aside from his work at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Little also worked as the curator of Asian art at the Art Institute of Chicago, associate curator of Chinese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and curator of Chinese art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

While at the Art Institute of Chicago, he organized the award-winning exhibition, Taoism and the Arts of China (2000), which was supported by multiple grants and honored by the College Art Association with the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for the leading exhibition catalogue. Between 2003 and 2008, he led an international team that organized the first exhibition to explore the Vajrayana Buddhist arts of Bhutan: The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan (2008). With more than 50 publications, some of his most recent works include New Songs on Ancient Tunes: 19th–20th Century Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Richard Fabian Collection (2007) and Neo Rauch Works 1994-2002: The Leipziger Volkszeitung Collection (2005).

In addition to his curatorial experience, he has taught the history of Chinese art at several institutions, including the University of Chicago. Having grown up in Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), Turkey, and upstate New York, Little received his bachelors from Cornell University, his masters from University of California, Los Angeles, and his doctorate from Yale University.

Little will join the LACMA staff in early March 2011.