Asian-American Art

Project Description:

Directed by Stanford Professor Gordon H. Chang and Professor Mark Dean Johnson of San Francisco State University, the Asian American Art Project at Stanford is the most comprehensive study and interpretation ever undertaken of the history of visual art produced by individuals of Asian ancestry in the United States from the mid-19th century to 1970. Fully collaborative in structure, the project involves scholars from fields including American History, Asian American Studies, Art History, East Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women's Studies.

Over the last decade, a research team involving specialists from institutions including the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, San Francisco State University, University of California at Los Angeles, and Stanford University, aided by more than fifty student interns, formed the foundation for this project. Research results now fill more than twenty linear feet of files, comprising the most comprehensive and largest resource about Asian American artists available anywhere. A major publication produced with the assistance of the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Stanford University has resulted from this research and will be released by Stanford University Press on September 29, 2008. This research also provides the basis for a related exhibition, Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970 organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco opening at the de Young Museum on October 25, 2008. The exhibition will also travel to the Noguchi Museum in 2009.

This project helps transform conceptions of American art and the lives of Asian Americans, and shifts discussion of American art history toward the west coast. It also contributes new transnational perspectives on Asian art history, and provides a multitude of new information to feed future exhibitions and related scholarly studies.

Publication available through Stanford University Press

Press Release

Exhibition information

Teikichi Hikoyama, Pines on the Shore, n.d., woodcut, 11 3/4 x 6 3/4 in., private collection, San Francisco

Core personnel:

• Gordon H. Chang (Professor of History, Stanford)
• Mark Johnson ( Professor of Art, San Francisco State University)
• Sharon Spain (Project Manager)

Contributors and Advisors:

• Karin Higa (Senior Curator of Art, Japanese American National Museum)
• Paul J. Karlstrom (Former West Coast Regional Director of the Archives of American Art)
• Shelley Sang-Hee Lee (Assistant Professor of History and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College)
• Margo Machida (Associate Professor of Art History and Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut at Storrs)
• Valerie J. Matsumoto (Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles)
• Kazuko Nakane (Independent scholar, Seattle)
• Dennis Reed (Dean of Arts, Los Angeles Valley College)
• Tom Wolf (Professor of Art History, Bard College)
• Mayching Kao (Former Dean, The Open University of Hong Kong)

Undergraduate Assistants:

• Melissa Singson
• Cynthia Lee
• Nico Machida