Chiao, who has served as the Dallas Historical Society’s executive director since 2018, was born in Taiwan and came to the United States as a child. Mandarin was his first language, and he can still speak it to this day.
“I speak household Chinese fluently. Business Chinese, not so much,” he says, though he did use his bilingual ability while working with Heritage Auctions as the face of its wine sale in Asia. “As a 5-year-old, you don’t talk about stocks and bonds.”
Chiao grew up in San Antonio, attended Texas A&M University for his undergraduate studies and came to Dallas for law school at Southern Methodist University in 1990.
“The big law schools at the time were (University of Texas) and really SMU if you wanted to do more business-type law,” Chiao says. “As an Aggie, I really didn’t want to go to UT, and as someone who wanted to stay in Texas, Dallas is kind of the big place. And when you go to SMU, you have a very good network of people, so that kind of seemed natural.”
Chiao’s career experience is varied. He has worked in real estate development, brought banks to Dallas and run a Bentley, Maserati and Rolls-Royce dealership on Lemmon Avenue. At Heritage Auctions, he headed up the trusts and estates department.
“I’ve always been a collector, whether it’s baseball cards to ties to cars,” he says. “You either collect or you don’t; it’s like a weird gene that you have. As someone who was a collector and who knew a lot of the estate attorneys in town, trust officers in town, Heritage was trying to grow, and a lot of people didn’t know that they had expanded from just coins out to other collectibles.”
He recalls coming across the largest collection of space memorabilia in his work from a man who died in New York, complete with Buzz Aldrin’s toothbrush from his mission to the Moon.
“It was like a $2 million sale of space memorabilia,” he says.
In 2012, while still working at Heritage Auctions, a friend asked him to join the Dallas Historical Society’s board and chair the collections committee.
The Dallas Historical Society was established in 1922 and has been housed in Fair Park since 1938. The nonprofit collects, preserves and exhibits Dallas and Texas artifacts. The collection includes the largest diorama of the Battle of the Alamo, Coach Tom Landry’s trophies and rings, and the speeches of John Leslie Patton, Jr., the first Black man to receive top administrative appointment in Dallas ISD.
Chiao was no stranger to joining boards (like the Dallas Summer Musicals board), so he accepted the request and stayed on for six years. While there, he made observations about how the society was run.
“We went through five directors in six years,” he says. “There was no stability at the top. In the previous 20 years, I think they went through 15 directors. … When I took over, there were four employees, full-time and one part-time, and they’re managing the Hall of State and a collection of 3 million items. The Hall of State was kind of not the best of shape because the City hadn’t done much to that building in a long time. But you just can’t run a building that size and have rentals and have a collection and have museum artifacts with four people.”
Chiao decided to step up to the plate and serve as the executive director in 2018 with a goal of getting the society to its centennial anniversary in 2022 before handing the role to someone else.
“Well, that was seven years ago,” he says. “I’m still there.”
The historical society received $7 million from the Harry W. Bass, Jr. Foundation last year to create Dallas history exhibits. The first one completed was Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom that explores the origins and impact of Juneteenth as well as the history of Dallas celebrations.
“We actually have the only copy of the Juneteenth document, the hand bill that was passed out during Juneteenth,” Chiao says. “We brought in a lot of technology so you can record your own history.”
The next exhibit is expected to cover Dallas history makers, people who made our city what it is, he says. Some of Dallas’ current-day movers and shakers will be honored on Nov. 20 during the society’s Dallas History Makers Luncheon at Fairmont Dallas.
“We tell the story of Dallas, North Texas and even Texas, so that current and future generations learn about us,” Chiao says. “It was important in the past, but with the growth of this city and all the people that are coming in from out of town, it becomes even more important for the people that are moving in from California, New York — you need to know where you are. You need to know the history of the place you’re at because if you don’t, then we lose our identity.”
“We try to tell the stories that people shouldn’t forget about Dallas.”