gaoyuan 媛
EDUCATION
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Honours B.A. in History of Art and Cinema Studies (Full Scholarship)
BIO
gaoyuan is a New York–based curator, researcher, and cultural strategist exploring contemporary art, technology, and spirituality. Grounded in phenomenological and epistemological inquiry and informed by cosmological, ecological, and consciousness research, her practice reimagines multimedia environments as sites of poetic resonance and dimensional intelligence. With interdisciplinary fluency across visual art, experimental sound, and emerging technologies, she develops curatorial frameworks, site-specific experiences, institutional strategies, and cross-sector partnerships that connect artistic experimentation with new forms of cultural ecosystem and public engagement. She is the founder of DMSN (Dimension) Lab, an experimental R&D platform for poetic worldbuilding.
Her work spans museums, foundations, festivals, artist studios and estates, and technology ventures across the United States, Canada, China, and the UAE. She has held curatorial positions with Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Bronx Museum, Arsenal Contemporary in New York and Montreal, and M WOODS Museums in Beijing in exhibition planning, collection development, and institutional partnerships. Across these institutions, she has contributed to major surveys of Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, as well as eight international group exhibitions, including a partnership with the British Museum. She curated Theater of Energies, a ten-artist group show spanning site-specific installations, olfactory activations, and phygital performances around transcultural conceptions of qi/energy, named an Artforum Must See.
Beyond curation, her cross-sector strategy experience includes developing strategic initiatives with Brooklyn Experimental Art Foundation, H Foundation LA, and the Ming Fay Estate, and advising creative tech ventures including FLORA AI and Cai Guo-Qiang’s cAI Lab. She began her career at Sequoia Capital working across digital technology and healthcare sectors on portfolio engagement, industry conferences, and strategic communications.
She was a Casa Muraro Summer Fellow at the 59th Venice Biennale, researching immersive environments in contemporary art; an ArtTable Fellow, researching non-Western mythological traditions and spiritual practices; and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Jackman Humanities Institute, leading an interdisciplinary project on the Malcove Collection. Additional training includes the University of Hong Kong Creative Entrepreneurship Program and the Princeton University Summer Institute for the Gifted.
Her broader field engagements have included SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, ELEKTRA Festival Montréal, Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab, and the Harvard East Asia Society Annual Conference. Her research has received support from the Ho Family of Hong Kong, Mary Coyne Rowell Jackman, and Raymond Moriyama, among others.
Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Impulse Magazine, and Caméra Stylo, while her work has been featured in Artforum, Artnet, Whitehot Magazine, Artefuse, and Screen. She is also the author of the experimental catalogue 3 A.M. Provocations.
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CONTACT
@gaoyuanne