Projects

Exploring scenes from a critical decade of rebuilding San Francisco’s Chinatown through the lens of the May’s Photo Studio. Co-sponsored by Stanford’s Asian American Art Initiative. 

This is Part 1 of 1920s Chinatown Insider, a multi-part story series exploring scenes and stories from a decade of rebuilding San Francisco’s Chinatown through the lens of the May’s Photo Studio.

Read more: Part 2: Interior Spaces; Part 3: Investing in the Community; A Tale of Two Opera Houses

 IMU UR2 (October 28-29, 2022) brings together artists, curators, and scholars to rethink and reimagine the histories and futures of artists of Asian descent.

Together with the exhibitions East of the Pacific: Making Histories of Asian American Art, The Faces of Ruth Asawa, and At Home/On Stage: Asian American Representation in Photography and Film at the Cantor Arts Center, IMU UR2 inaugurates the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI). This event also serves as the public launch of the Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné, a free online resource that is a collaboration between the AAAI, the Martin Wong Foundation, and Stanford Libraries.

The Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné (MWCR) is a free online resource featuring the paintings, drawings, poetry, and ceramics of artist Martin Wong (1946–99). In addition to detailed records of over 800 works of art, the project features new essays by scholars and curators, a comprehensive illustrated chronology, and a wealth of primary source material including revealing interviews, a 1991 recording of Wong speaking about his work, and a film portrait from the last decade of his life. 

A collaboration between Stanford Libraries, the Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) and the Martin Wong Foundation, the MWCR is the inaugural research project of the AAAI. 

From January to August 2022, we met with several Asian American and Pacific Islander folk based in the San Francisco Bay Area to share meals and tips, like how best to enjoy a persimmon and strategies for focusing one's rage. A selection of artworks from Stanford’s East of the Pacific exhibition served as our conversation prompts—and as with any good time spent between new friends, we found ourselves journeying into the personal, the mundane, and the fantastic. From these recorded conversations, we devised three audio tours that share a life with the exhibited works, not as descriptions, but as a chorus of lived experience that brings space to memory through visceral detail.

Kitazawa Seed Company is dedicated to honoring the history of Asian American contributions to U.S. agriculture. We worked directly with the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University and Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI) to produce this limited edition Kanamachi Japanese Turnip paper packet. This cover features the work of artist Chiura Obata. 3 Gram Packet ~970 Seeds.