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 Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams; As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic; After Hope: Videos of Resistance; the award-winning Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China; and A Lasting Memento: John Thomson’s Photographs Along the River Min. Most recently, she served as guest-editor for Aperture's summer 2023 issue, Being and Becoming: Asian in America.

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 Asia, including as a contributor to Aperture and the Trans-Asia Photography Review and as a contributing author to The Chinese Photobook (Aperture, 2015), Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World (Guggenheim, 2017), and Ai Weiwei: Beijing 1993–2003 (MIT Press, 2019). 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, where she is working toward her Ph.D.

Follow @i.am.stung on Instagram.