About the Scholar

Originally from Osaka, Yasufumi Nakamori studied law at the University of Wisconsin and practiced in New York City for several years. Following the events of 9/11, he embarked on a new career path, obtaining his Ph.D. in art history from Cornell University in 2011. Since then, Yasufumi has held several distinguished positions, most recently serving as Director of the Asia Society Museum in New York, and its Vice President of Arts and Culture. From 2018 to 2023, he was Senior Curator of International Art (Photography) at the Tate Modern, London. Prior to joining Tate Modern, Nakamori was Department Head of Photography and New Media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and between 2008-2016, he served as the Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Nakamori has organized numerous exhibitions during his career including, at Tate Britain, The 80’s: Photographing Britain (2024–25) and Zanele Muholi (2020–21). At the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, he curated For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 (2015) and Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture, Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro (2010). Nakamori’s catalog for the latter was awarded the 2011 Alfred J. Barr Award by the College Art Association (CAA). In 2026 his book The 80s: Photographing Britain received the Best Museum Exhibition Catalogue Award from the Historians of British Art. Nakamori has authored, edited, or co-edited nine books and published numerous scholarly essays, including one for the forthcoming exhibition Afterlives: Japanese American Artists and the Postwar Era (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2027). In addition to publishing extensively, Nakamori teaches and lectures regularly around the world.