Lance Michael Fung is an American curator and art gallery director known for large-scale, site-specific contemporary art exhibitions. He directed Holly Solomon Gallery, founded Lance Fung Gallery and Fung Collaboratives, and curated projects including The Snow Show, Lucky Number Seven, and Constellations: Global Reflections.
Background
Lance Michael Fung was born on January 22, 1963, in San Francisco, California, to William Fung and Marian (Chan) Fung. His background connected the San Francisco Bay Area with the international contemporary-art world in which he later worked.
Fung has described an early interest in both science and art. While studying at the University of California, Davis, he initially pursued scientific and pre-medical interests alongside art before developing a career in contemporary-art curation and gallery direction.
Education
Fung studied at the University of California, Davis, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1986. The university, founded in 1908 as a farm school and later becoming a major public research university, has longstanding strengths in agriculture, science, and the arts.
He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1989. Founded in 1947, the School of Visual Arts developed as a specialized institution devoted to education in fine art, design, and related creative disciplines, placing Fung in the cultural environment of New York's expanding contemporary-art scene.
Career
Fung began his professional life as the owner of Nice & Tasty in Davis, California, from 1986 to 1989. He then worked as assistant to the owner of Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City from 1988 to 1990. Marian Goodman Gallery, established in 1977, became known for presenting important European and American contemporary artists and for connecting commercial galleries with broader institutional and intellectual art networks.
From 1990 to 1996, Fung was director of Holly Solomon Gallery in New York. Founded in 1975, the gallery was associated with experimental contemporary art and with artists working across painting, photography, video, and conceptual practices. Fung's gallery career developed during a period when SoHo and later Chelsea were central to New York's contemporary-art economy.
Fung founded Lance Fung Gallery in New York in 1996 and directed it until 2003. The gallery presented contemporary artists and exhibitions, while his broader curatorial practice increasingly focused on collaborative, temporary, and site-specific projects. He founded Fung Collaboratives in 1999 and has served as its chief curator, developing exhibitions that bring artists, architects, public agencies, community groups, and cultural organizations into shared projects.
Since 1992, Fung has also worked as a freelance and independent curator. His projects have included The Snow Show in Finnish Lapland in 2003–2004 and Turin, Italy, in 2006; The Beijing Project in connection with the 2008 Summer Olympic Games; Lucky Number Seven, the 2008 SITE Santa Fe International Biennial; Wonderland in San Francisco in 2009; and Constellations: Global Reflections in Bali in 2022. These exhibitions emphasized temporary installations, international collaboration, public space, and relationships between contemporary art and architecture.
Achievements
Fung curated The Snow Show, an international exhibition in which artists and architects collaborated on temporary works made largely from snow and ice in Finnish Lapland and later in Turin, Italy. The project placed contemporary art and architecture in an exceptionally demanding natural environment and became a defining example of his site-specific curatorial practice.
He curated Lucky Number Seven, the seventh SITE Santa Fe International Biennial, in 2008. The exhibition brought together temporary and ephemeral works across Santa Fe and extended contemporary art beyond a conventional gallery setting.
He curated Constellations: Global Reflections in Bali in 2022, an outdoor exhibition involving artists from G20 countries and addressing ecological, social, and global-cooperation themes through large-scale public installations.
(Edited by Lance Fung, this exhibition catalogue documents...)
2005
Views
Fung's stated curatorial philosophy emphasizes collaboration, site-specificity, and public access. He has argued that contemporary art should engage audiences beyond the professional art world and has organized projects in which artworks respond directly to their physical, social, and environmental settings.
His projects also reflect an interest in temporary and ephemeral forms. The Snow Show used snow and ice as primary materials, while Lucky Number Seven presented works intended to disappear after the exhibition, placing impermanence and the conditions of exhibition at the center of the curatorial experience.
Membership
Fung was a member of the Art Dealers Association of America, a nonprofit professional organization representing leading art galleries and promoting standards of scholarship, connoisseurship, and integrity in the American art trade.
Member
Art Dealers Association of America
,
United States
Personality
Fung has described his curatorial practice as collaborative and oriented toward making contemporary art accessible to the general public. In interviews, he has emphasized social equality, public participation, and exhibitions created for particular locations.
Connections
Fung is the son of William Fung and Marian (Chan) Fung. His professional activities have connected him with artists, architects, galleries, cultural organizations, public agencies, and community groups through collaborative exhibition projects.
Father:
William Fung
Mother:
Marian (Chan) Fung
References
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Lance Fung
Biographical profile describing Fung's gallery career, independent curatorial work, The Snow Show, The Beijing Project, Lucky Number Seven, and Wonderland.
2026
Fung Collaboratives, About
Organization profile describing Fung's role as chief curator, the founding of Fung Collaboratives, and selected international exhibition projects.
