Dr. Jay Xu has served as the Barbara Bass Bakar Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco since 2008, and he is the first Chinese American director at a major American art museum. Xu is committed to elevating Asian American voices in the American society; to deepening understanding of Asian art and culture in the global context; and to advocating the art museum as an essential platform for cross-cultural understanding. Under his leadership, the museum launched the Transformation Project due to completion in 2021, which involves launch of contemporary art, expansion of exhibition and public spaces, renovation of collection galleries and education classroom, and investment in digital tools for deeper and richer audience engagement, all underwritten by a $100 million campaign that he personally led. 

Xu serves in a variety of professional responsibilities. He is a special advisor to Dr. James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust; a member of the governing board of the Terra Foundation for American Art; a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors (North America); a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University; a member of the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Art Museums; a member of the Advisory Board of the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies, UC Berkeley; and a member of the Advisory Board of the Shanghai Museum.

Xu also serves in a variety of civic responsibilities. He is a member of the governing board of the recently formed Chinatown Media and Art Collaborative (CMAC) in San Francisco, committed to celebrate contemporary creative expressions at the intersection of community, culture and media and to foster economic recovery and social justice. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Asia Society Norther California; a member of the Committee of 100, a national nonpartisan organization composed of American citizens of Chinese descent who have achieved positions of leadership in the United States in a broad range of professions. In 2015, Dr. Xu became the first Asian American museum director elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Xu earned his MA and PhD in early Chinese art and archaeology at Princeton University. He is an award-winning scholar of Chinese art, and has had nearly forty years of international museum experience as a research scholar, curator, and museum director. He previously served as assistant to the museum director at the Shanghai Museum; research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; curator of Chinese art at the Seattle Art Museum; head of the Asian Art department and then chairman of the Department of Asian and Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.