About Konrad Ng

Dr. Konrad Ng was appointed director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program in 2011. As director, Ng is responsible for initiatives, public programs and exhibitions about the Asian Pacific American experience, and works with all Smithsonian museums and centers to support Asian Pacific American research, collections, outreach and educational activities. Prior to joining the Smithsonian Institution, Ng was a professor in the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Academy for Creative Media where he taught courses on the art and history of cinema and digital media. His scholarly and professional work explores how Asian and Asian American communities use cinema and digital media to engage in cultural preservation, political representation and community mobilization.

Under Dr. Ng's leadership, the Asian Pacific American program supported the Smithsonian Folklife Festival Program, "Asian Pacific Americans: Local Lives, Global Ties," and developed "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter," a groundbreaking exhibition of contemporary portraiture about the Asian American experience, with the National Portrait Gallery. He is currently overseeing two major heritage initiatives, "HomeSpun: The Smithsonian Indian American Heritage Project" and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Asian Pacific Americans Project. Ng is also at work on a new media project to commemorate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and working with the Smithsonian Latino Center on a project about Asian and Latino intersections in history, art and culture.

From 2007-2008, Dr. Ng played a key role in constituency outreach to Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and new media initiatives for the Obama Presidential Campaign. From 2004-2007, Ng was the curator of film and video at the Honolulu Museum of Art and from 2002-2004, he was the festival coordinator and film programmer for the Hawaii International Film Festival. Ng was the program manager for the East-West Center and the University of Hawaii's International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program, assisting with the administration of the program, its curriculum, and its students and faculty. Ng serves on the boards of several nonprofit arts and culture organizations: the Center for Asian American Media, the Global Film Initiative, the Asian American Literary Review, and the Honolulu urban arts collective, Interisland Terminal. He is a member of the Association for Asian American Studies and Australia's Academy of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.

Dr. Ng earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, his master's degree in cultural, social and political thought from the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, and his bachelor's degree in philosophy and ethnic studies from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.