Headshot of Dr.Orianna Cacchione

Dr. Orianna Cacchione

Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University Museums
  • Profile

    Orianna Cacchione is the deputy director and curator of exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums. Her curatorial practice and scholarly research are committed to expanding the canon of contemporary art to reflect the global circulations of art and ideas, especially those that have been underrepresented, marginalized or overlooked. A veteran of university art museums, she is engaged in thinking about the museum as a space of experimental research that stimulates new forms of inquiry and community. She is currently developing the first U.S. presentation of Singapore-based artist Shubigi Rao’s long-term research project, Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book (Fall 2026) for the Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond. She is also expanding research started as part of the exhibition, Monochrome Multitudes, co-curated with Christine Mehring at the Smart Museum of Art in 2022, into a book that reconsiders the “monochrome” through new material, conceptual, and global frameworks.

    Cacchione has previously held curatorial and leadership positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has curated multiple projects, including solo presentations of Abigail DeVille, Tang Chang, Tiffany Chung, Cauleen Smith, Bob Thompson, Haegue Yang, Samson Young, and Zhang Peili, and co-curated the pioneering exhibition, The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China with Wu Hung. A specialist in contemporary Chinese art, Cacchione holds a Ph.D. in art history, theory and criticism from the University of California, San Diego.

  • Selected Publications
    Books

    Tiffany Chung: Indelible Traces (Santa Barbara: Art, Design & Architecture Museums/Hirmer Publishers, 2026)

    Samson Young: Silver Moon or Golden Star, Which Will You Buy of Me? (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2019)

    The Allure of Matter: Material Art in China, co-edited with Wu Hung (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2019)

    Zhang Peili: Record. Repeat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2017)

    Edited Volumes

    Monochrome Multitudes: The Art of One Color from Allais to Zeisler, co-edited with Christine Mehring (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2027)

    Imaginable Worlds: Art, Crisis, and Global Futures (Chicago and New Delhi: Smart Museum of Art/University of Chicago Press and Serendipity Arts Foundation, 2023)

    The Allure of Matter: Materiality across Chinese Art, co-edited with Wei-Cheng Lin (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art/University of Chicago Press, 2021)

    Journal Articles

    “Two Women in Hangzhou: Another History of Abstract Art in China,” at Women in Abstraction: Another History of Abstraction in the 20th Century” in Cahiers du musée national d’art moderne (Spring 2022)

    “Related Rhythms: Situating Zhang Peili and Contemporary Chinese Video Art in the Globalizing Art World” in Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (Spring 2018)

    “To Enter Art History – Reading and Writing Art History in China” in Journal of Art Historiography (June 2014)

    “Wu Street: Tracing the Lineages of the Internationalization of the Art World” in Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January/February 2012)

    Book Chapters

    “A Reflection on ‘All the World’s Futures: Global Art and Art History in the Wake of COVID-19’” with Jessica Hong, in Simone Douglas, Adam Geczy, and Sean Lowry, ed., Where is Art?: Space, Time and Location in Contemporary Art, Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies (New York: Routledge, 2022)

    “The Assault of Representational Painting: New Materials and ’85 New Wave Movement in Post-Mao China,” in Orianna Cacchione and Wei-Cheng Lin, ed., The Allure of Matter: Art and Materiality in Chinese Art (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2021)

    “Wu Street: Tracing the Lineages of the Internationalization of the Art World” in Wang Lin, ed. Voice of the Unseen – Chinese Independent Art 1979/Today Essays: The International Image of Chinese Contemporary Art (Heidelberg, Germany: Alte Brucke Verlag, 2013) 

    Essays

    Catalogue Essays

    “The Indelible Traces in Tiffany Chung’s Critical Cartography” in Tiffany Chung: indelible traces (Santa Barbara: Art, Design & Architecture Museums/Hirmer Publishers, 2026)

    “Parallel Dimensions: Shifting between Haegue Yang’s Flatworks and Sculpture” in Haegue Yang: Flatworks 2004-2023 (Chicago: Arts Club of Chicago, 2024)

    “Reasonable Music for Nervous Times” in Artist’s Rooms: Samson Young (Dubai: Art Jameel, 2021)

    “Samson Young: Silver moon or golden star, which will you buy of me?” in Samson Young: Silver moon or golden star, which will you buy of me? (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2019)

    “From ‘Synthetic Materials’ to Pantyhose: New Material Relationships in Post-Mao China” in The Allure of Matter: Material Art in China (Chicago: Smart Museum of Art, 2019)

    “Tang Chang: Abstracting the Line, Retrieving the Image” in Tang Chang: The Painting that Is Painted with Poetry is Profoundly Beautiful, exhibition booklet, Smart Museum of Art, 2018

    “Mechanisms of Restraint: Zhang Peili’s Subversions of Art and Video” in Zhang Peili: Record. Repeat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2017)