Our Mission

The Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) advances research, education, community engagement, and public access to the work of Asian American/diasporic artists and makers. Primarily based at the Cantor Arts Center, the AAAI strives to build one of the most significant museum collections of Asian American art and make it available to all through the museum’s curatorial program. We model an innovative art history that centers primary sources (works of art, archives, oral histories) to generate collaboration among artists, scholars, students, and community members; and across the museum, classroom, archive, and public.  

The AAAI was co-founded in 2018 by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander and Marci Kwon.  It is housed at the Cantor Arts Center, in partnership with the Department of Art & Art History, Stanford Libraries and Special Collections, and the Asian American Research Center at Stanford.  Our actives include acquiring and conserving works of art and archives by Asian American/diasporic artists; activating them in research, education, and artist projects; and making them accessible through exhibition, digital projects, and public programming.  

The AAAI approaches research, exhibitions, community engagement, and education as connected rather than separate endeavors.  For example, the acquisition of a work of art might include discussions with Stanford Libraries and Special Collections to bring the artist’s papers or archives into their collections.  Works and archival resources are presented to the public in exhibitions and permanent installations at the Cantor Arts Center, and become the basis for coursework in related undergraduate and graduate classes.  These resources might also be activated in special research or artists projects, such as the online Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné, performance collective For You’s audioguide tours for the exhibition East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art, or publications such as “Asian American Art, Pasts and Futures,” in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. 

Our use of “Asian American” reflects the term’s Bay Area roots in interethnic, anti-colonial solidarity, while also acknowledging the distinct histories, experiences, and relationships to American imperialism contained by the category.  Rather than imposing a homogenizing, fixed frame upon artists and works of art, we allow them to relate to terms denoting race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexuality in whatever way they wish.