Dr Sophie McIntyre

Biography

Sophie McIntyre is a Senior Lecturer in creative industries and visual arts, and an established art curator. Her research interests include art history and theory, curating, museology, public and socially-engaged art, identity politics, Indigenous representations, cultural diplomacy and soft power, especially in the Asia-Pacific (including Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand). She has published nationally and internationally in peer-reviewed journals, books, anthologies and exhibition catalogues, and curated more than 30 exhibitions, several of which have toured nationally and internationally. Sophie has been a visiting scholar, and delivered keynote and guest lectures in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Laos, China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States.

While Sophie has published and curated exhibitions of art from Australia and across the Asia-Pacific, her focus has been on Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong, where she has lived, studied and worked for 25 years. She is the sole author of the book, Imagining Taiwan: the Role of Art in Taiwan's Quest for Identity (Brill, 2018), which was based on her PhD from ANU. The most recent exhibitions she has curated include: Ink Remix: contemporary art from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (2015-2017) which featured works by 14 leading artists and toured Australia (Canberra Museum and Gallery; Bendigo Art Gallery; UNSW Galleries; and Museum of Brisbane); and she was commissioned to curate Intertextuality - A solo exhibition by Hang Chunhui (2018-2019) (Asia Art Center, Taipei & Beijing). Sophie has received grants, scholarships and fellowships from Australia, Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong to conduct academic and curatorial research in this area, and she was invited by the Comité International L’Histoire de L’Art (CIHA) to be an International Chair and Convenor in the 34th World Congress of Art History (Beijing, 2016).

Prior to becoming a full time academic, Sophie was a director and curator in public galleries and museums in Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. She worked predominantly in the university art museum sector, and was the inaugural director of Griffith University's art museum at Southbank; and the second director at Victoria University of Wellington's Adam Art Gallery in New Zealand. Sophie has also worked at national and state museums, including the National Museum of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Since 2007, she has been a freelance curator.

In 1991, Sophie co-founded a non-for-profit arts organization, Dihedron, in Brisbane which was one of Australia's first arts organisations supporting and promoting artists and artworkers from a culturally diverse background (especially refugees and recent migrants in Australia) through exhibitions, publications, community and educational programs.

Sophie was also co-founder and consultant for University Art Museums Australia (UAMA), and she is an authorised consultant for the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.