PJ Gubatina Policarpio is a curator, educator, and cultural leader whose research and practice considers how art can reshape historical understanding, cultivate public imagination, and deepen our capacity to live together. Through exhibitions, publications, and public programs, he collaborates with artists, writers, scholars, and communities to illuminate overlooked histories, foreground cultural memory, and build new forms of solidarity.
Working across museums, artist-centered organizations, and independent initiatives, Policarpio approaches curating as a collaborative practice of research, interpretation, and world-making. His projects move between contemporary art, education, publishing, and civic engagement, asking how artistic practice can generate new knowledge while expanding the social role of cultural institutions.
Policarpio is Curator at Root Division in San Francisco, where he leads the organization's exhibition program. Previously, he held positions at the Queens Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Brooklyn Museum, where he was a Fellow in Museum Education. As the inaugural manager of youth development at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, he developed an institution-wide portfolio of youth programs and strategic partnerships that reimagined how museums engage young people as artists, collaborators, and cultural leaders.
His recent curatorial projects include Notes for Tomorrow (Independent Curators International, 2021-Present), Trina Michelle Robinson: Open Your Eyes to Water (500 Capp Street and Root Division, 2026), to see what isn’t hard to see (Headlands Center for the Arts, 2025), Ceremonies: Rituals to Self (San Francisco Arts Commission, 2025), Cian Dayrit: Liberties Were Taken (Root Division, 2025), , Letter from the Network (Berkeley Art Center, 2024), Notes on Cultural Evidence (slash, 2023), Conversations on Carlos Villa: World-Making and Cross-Cultural Solidarity (Asian Art Museum, 2022), Tarsal by Metatarsal (Headlands Center for the Arts, 2021), Solidarity Struggle Victory (Southern Exposure, 2019), Rally: Queer Art and Activism Now (Dixon Place, 2017).
Beyond exhibitions, Policarpio is co-founder of Pilipinx American Library, an itinerant library and public programming platform dedicated to diasporic Filipinx perspectives. He has served as a juror for Artadia, the Headlands Center for the Arts Bay Area Fellowship, and the Rainin Foundation Artist Fellowships, and has presented lectures and keynote addresses at California College of the Arts, the University of California at Berkeley, Portland State University School of Art and Design, The New School, Maryland Institute College of Art, and School of the Art Institute Chicago. His publications are held in the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Born in the Philippines, Policarpio immigrated to the United States in his early teens. He lives and works between San Francisco and New York City.