Karen Smith is a Beijing-based British art historian. She graduated from Wimbledon Art School in 1987 and moved to Asia a year later. Smith settled in China in 1992 with the aim of engaging with an art scene that was then almost unknown beyond its national borders. Through diverse roles both in China and internationally as a writer, critic, and curator, today Smith is an internationally recognized authority on Chinese contemporary art. She is currently finishing a book entitled Bang to Boom: China’s New Art in the 1990s, due out in 2013.