Stephen Little


Dr. Stephen Little Ph.D. is an American Asian art scholar, museum administrator and artist.

Biography

Stephen Little's father was a linguist and cultural attaché for the government of the United States. Little was raised in Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, and Turkey, not living in the United States until age 11. He initially studied nuclear physics, but changed his major to Chinese art. He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1975, an M.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1977, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1987. He held curatorial positions at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Honolulu Museum of Art. He held the Pritzker Curatorship of Asian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, prior to becoming Director of the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2003. In 2011, Dr. Little left Hawaii to join the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he is currently the Florence and Harry Sloan Curator of Chinese Art and Department Head, Chinese & Korean Art Departments.

Publications

Dr. Little has painted all his adult life. He currently works in a minimalist style strongly influenced by East Asian ink and wash painting, especially works by the 13th century Chan painters Muqi and Yujian. Bolinas, from 2009, exemplifies this style. Dr. Little's acrylic on canvas painting titled 4.29.09 is in the collection of the Hawaii State Art Museum.