About Charles

Headshot photography of Charles Chen

I’m an award-winning museum professional, photographer, and artist residing in Washington, DC. A native of America’s cultural capital, New York City, and inclined to the visual arts at a very young age, my dedication to museums and the arts was a natural evolution. 

Over the course of my career, I’ve helped Fortune 500 companies, higher education institutions, world class museums, and cultural organizations better engage, serve, and brand. This has allowed me to explore successive career paths in technology, design, and educational engagement.

My abiding love of museums and the arts drives a desire to improve the diversity, inclusiveness, and impact of museums. I believe that museums and cultural institutions can and must realize their responsibilities and full potential as community-anchor institutions, and as agents of education and social change in an age of growing inequality and division. My career and my interests in technology drive a parallel desire to explore new forms of storytelling, engagement, and dialogue for cultural organizations.

Currently, I’m engaged in public history and interpretation at the United States Capitol Visitor Center, where I explore ways to engage visitors from across the nation and around the world about American politics, history, democracy, and the challenges each has posed for the United States in its struggle towards a more perfect union.

I also currently work at The Phillips Collection – America’s first modern art museum – where I help to protect one of the world’s finest modern art collections in a small museum, and where I help facilitate visitors’ museum experience.