The Bronx Museum of the Arts has announced that it has hired Eileen Jeng Lynch as its new director of curatorial affairs, effective August 1. Jeng Lynch succeeds Antonio Sergio Bessa, who departed in 2019 and now serves as the museum’s chief curator emeritus. She arrives to the museum with a strong background in politically and environmentally tinged curation and in community outreach, which meshes with the Bronx Museum’s focus on social justice. Jeng Lynch is the curator of “Abigail Deville: Bronx Heavens,” which opens at the Bronx Museum October 12 and runs through April 9, 2023.
“I am confident that her curatorial acumen, in tandem with her extensive expertise stewarding residency programs and community initiatives, will be instrumental in charting a course for the next fifty years of the Bronx Museum,” said museum director Klaudio Rodriguez in a statement.
Jeng Lynch was previously senior curator of visual arts at the Bronx’s Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center that frequently hosts exhibitions and commissions. In this role, she organized solo exhibitions for emerging artists, thematic group exhibitions, and the residency program, curating a number of shows that took climate change and the environment as their theme. Her most recent effort in that regard, “Water Scarcity: Perpetual Thirst,” investigating access to clean water, is on view at Wave Hill through August 28. Prior to coming to Wave Hill, Jeng Lynch worked at RxArt, Sperone Westwater, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Contemporary Art. She earned her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Syracuse University.
“Through an artist-centered and values-driven approach, I am committed to broadening access to the arts through exhibitions and programming that are responsive and community engaged,” said Jeng Lynch in a statement. “As the Bronx Museum has a longstanding history of dynamic programs that give voice to the unique individuals who comprise the local community, I am excited to join the team and support the Museum’s continued success both locally and internationally.”
The Bronx Museum, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, is undergoing a $21 million expansion that is expected to be completed in 2025.