Detail: The Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University is proud to present the exhibition “Art, Archives, and Activism: Martin Wong’s Downtown Crossings” from March 6-December 18, 2009. From the mid ’80s through the early ’90s, artist Martin Wong and other downtown New York artists were affected by an intersection of major historic events spanning the AIDS epidemic, urban renewal and attacks on graffiti in the city, to Tiananmen Square abroad. The exhibition explores artists who crossed paths during this particular time, influencing and inspiring discussions, art works, and activism.
The exhibition winds a story through the voices of his closest friends and peers during Wong’s time in New York City from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s. As Wong would come to portray his friends, fellow artists such as Miguel (Mikey) Pinero, Sharp, Chris “Daze” Ellis, among others within his paintings, bringing them into a world of a Lower East Side re-imagined with the fantasies of escapism and romanticism of a barren land amid towering walls of crumbling brick where they dwelt, in this exhibition, the archival materials and lasting influences of Wong’s legacy and his friendships in turn shape a portrait of the artist—re-imagined and remembered.
The artist’s work shown in “Art, Archives, and Activism” range from the early ’80s through the ’90s and have been loaned from his estate at PPOW Gallery and the collections of his closest friends. Some photos, paintings and drawings have never been shown to the public before.
Working with and drawing materials from the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University along with personal collections, “Art, Archives, and Activism” presents a story of a time and the interconnectedness of the artists with the world around them through the artwork, letters, photographs, videos, postcards, posters, and flyers of participant artists. The exhibition traverses the artificial borders of these two decades, and instead is spread through the moment delineated by artists’ lives and the issues that engulfed them — their personal influences, artistic production and activism that were catalyzed from these connections and overlapping paths.

The opening reception is also the reception and book celebration for the Asian American Art Symposium 2009 at NYU presented by A/P/A Institute and co-sponsored by The Noguchi Museum; The Japan Foundation, New York; The Asia Society; NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development; and Museum of Chinese in America. For more information about the symposium please visit www.apa.nyu.edu

About Martin Wong:

Martin Wong (b.1946-1999) is best known for his elegiac realist paintings of the Lower East Side tenements and their inhabitants. Born in Portland, OR, and raised in San Francisco, CA, Wong moved from the West Coast to New York City in 1978 to the Meyer’s hotel, what he described in a letter to a friend as the last remaining single occupancy hotel at the waterfront. He would famously relocate to the Lower East Side in 1982, where he remained until returning to San Francisco in his parents’ care in the late ’90s while fighting his personal battle with AIDS. Trained as a ceramicist, the colors that Wong used were culled from the paints used in his ceramics from iron oxides to gold accenting the decaying brick walls of abandoned Lower East Side tenements. Wong would come to be an influential artist within the downtown scene and a mentor to a league of young artists including Lady Pink, Chris “Daze” Ellis, Lee Quinones, among others. In 1998, then New Museum curator Dan Cameron and Barry Blinderman, who had been Wong’s art dealer and was now the director at the Illinois State University Galleries at Normal, organized a major retrospective for Wong at The New Museum. The artist is also collected by the Metropolitan Museum, the Bronx Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art, among other collections. After his death on August 12, 1999, his mother Florence Wong Fie established the Martin Wong Foundation, which continues to support artists and educational programs in the arts.

About A/P/A Institute at NYU:

The A/P/A Institute has produced programming, publications, exhibitions, new research, and a long-running artist-in-residence program, attracting leading academics and practitioners. The multiple archival collection initiatives, including the recently completed acquisition of the Yoshio Kishi / Irene Yah Ling Sun Collection, spearheaded by the A/P/A Institute have also continued to build a foundation of, and preservation and access to, important historical documents and previously overlooked materials for present and future researchers and students. Currently located in the Union Square neighborhood, the A/P/A Institute continues to serve the community with public programs based off research, cultural production, and scholarship on contemporary issues facing Asian/Pacific American communities and discourse.

About Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU:

The Fales Library, comprising nearly 200,000 volumes, and over 10,000 linear feet of archive and manuscript materials, houses the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries. The Fales Collection was given to NYU in 1957 by DeCoursey Fales in memory of his father, Haliburton Fales. It is especially strong in English literature from the middle of the 18th century to the present, documenting developments in the novel. The Downtown Collection documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present and is extremely rich in archival holdings, including extensive film and video objects. The Food and Cookery Collection is a vast, and rapidly expanding collection of books and manuscripts documenting food and foodways with particular emphasis on New York City. Other strengths of the collection include the Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll Materials, the Robert Frost Library, the Kaplan and Rosenthal Collections of Judaica and Hebraica and the manuscript collections of Elizabeth Robins and Erich Maria Remarque. The Fales Library preserves manuscripts and original editions of books that are rare or important not only because of their texts, but also because of their value as artifacts.

Exhibition Opening Reception: March 6, 2009, 6-8PM.
Gallery hours: 10am-6pm Monday-Friday
FREE and open to the public.

Artist: Martin Wong

Other artists, writers and friends of Martin Wong who have loaned or have work included in this exhibition include Chris “Daze” Ellis, Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Jane Dickson, Miguel Pinero, Yasmin Ramirez, Lady Pink, Lee Quinones, Sharp, Zhang Hongtu, John “Crash” Matos, Wicked Gary, Bing Lee, PPOW Gallery, Harley Spiller, and his New York art dealer Barry Blinderman at Semaphore gallery. Additional items loaned from the Martin Wong papers at the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University.

Co-curated by Alexandra Chang, Tomie Arai and I-Ting Emily Chu.
Associate Curated by Mie Iwatsuki.
Archival consultation and support by Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU
Installation design by Jonathan Lo