PRESIDENT
Lucia Chen serves as President and Executive Director of the T. F. Chen Cultural Center, the New World Art Center, the Chen Foundation, and Neo-World Enterprises. She is also a member of the Museum Store Association; and is also included in Strathmore’s “Who’s Who” and “National Register’s Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals”.
Lucia Chen has had twenty-five years of experience in the international art world as an art dealer, agent, advisor, publisher, and collector. She has written numerous articles concerning the international art market for various magazines, and she is an avid collector of African art, master prints, and contemporary artworks. Mrs. Chen specializes in curating and promoting large-scale exhibitions, organizing and establishing art galleries, and consulting for art investment. She is one of the few successful Asian women in NYC who has made a name for herself in the international contemporary art business. Her success has been documented in several interviews in TV and magazines.
Lucia was born in Taiwan in 1948, and was educated at Taipei Normal College, the University of Paris, and the University of Maryland. In 1975, Lucia married the artist Dr. T. F. Chen. From that moment on, she immersed herself in the art world and in her new commitment to support her husband’s career. She remarked:
“As his wife, I knew he was not an ordinary painter, but an artist with high academic training, aesthetic ability, cultural insight and humanitarian ideals. He initiated his ‘Neo-Iconography’ style, bearing a deep sense of mission. Hoping that he could concentrate wholly on his study and creation, I began to manage his art and all his practical affairs. I learned through work and research.”
Lucia began to manage Dr. Chen’s art in 1976, following no market orientation, art fashion or collector’s mentality. Yet their passion, conviction, and ideals were plentiful. Her primary goal was not to make a profit, but rather to introduce a new art style – a new, radical school of thought. While Chen gave himself wholeheartedly to his vision of a New Renaissance through art, Lucia dedicated herself completely to the realization of these dreams into reality.
In 1980, Lucia opened up their first art gallery – Gallery New World in Washington DC After four years, the Chens moved their home-base to the heart of SoHo, NYC, where the newly-named Lucia Gallery expanded and began to branch out internationally. In 1987 and 1995, Lucia opened up her Gallery New World in Taipei, Taiwan, as a sister gallery.
From 1994-1996, Lucia redesigned and established a six-story 20,000 square foot museum building to serve as the headquarters for the New World Art Center and the T. F. Chen Cultural Center — a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Dr. T. F. Chen’s dream of a global New Renaissance and East – West cultural exchange.
Lucia Chen has produced more than 100 one-man shows for Dr. Chen, has personally established seven galleries, and has published several limited editions, as well as art books, art cards, and other licensing products. Under the T. F. Chen Cultural Center, Lucia has served as curator for dozens of large-scale art shows for cultural groups, for example: group shows for 150 Japanese artists, 60 Italian artists, 50 contemporary overseas Chinese artists, 30 contemporary emerging artists, French artists, and African American artists. In addition to bringing in artists from around the world, Lucia has created many cultural activities, such as poetry readings, film screenings, musical performances, seminars, etc.
Since 2000, Lucia has been involved in organizing Chen’s three-year art tour in Taiwan which is exhibiting his “Jade Mountain Series,” increasing Chen’s presence at international art fairs, building up her museum store’s line of art merchandising and licensing, and investing in real estate.
Through hard work, perseverance, and a refusal to accept limitations, Lucia Chen has almost single-handedly built her own empire in the field of art that she loves.