In the recently published collection We Are in Open Circuits, Paik’s prescient critiques of image consumption suggest he probably would’ve been great at Twitter.
Author Archives: Ryan Wong
Ryan Lee Wong is an arts writer based in Brooklyn. He has worked at the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Chinese in America, where he was assistant curator.
A Sculpture Conjures the Secret Life of Trees
Jean Shin’s “Allée Gathering” at Storm King shows how little many of us know about trees and nature.
How to Talk About Whiteness
The Racial Imaginary Institute wants to “make visible that which has been intentionally presented as inevitable,” to disrupt the “bloc” of whiteness.
Mel Chin’s Tongue-in-Cheek Encyclopedia of the World
He stares down the evils that have driven history, intervenes in public spaces, and collaborates with science — all in service to strengthening community
The Long 1960s, Seen Through NYPD Surveillance Photographs
The show offers rich historical materials, but little contextualization or insight into its relevance for our current political moment.
Tracing the Lasting Influence of Black Power
The Schomburg Center examines the importance of the political and social movement, from its poetry and music to its inspiring of marginalized groups around the world.
A Syllabus for Making Work About Race as a White Artist in America
This course offers a starting point: assignments for the white artist to understand their own racial position.
A Brief History of the Art Collectives of NYC’s Chinatown
Chinatown has long been a home to radical organizers and artists, collectives, and movements that have taken on questions of art production and displacement.
New Art from China Renders Local Histories Fantastic, Futuristic, and Bloody
Each of these thoughtful, well-realized works offers an investigation into global politics, the contemporary as historical, and environmental collapse, with room to laugh, rest, and think in between.
Painting the Violent Life Cycles of Bruises
In his new series at James Cohan Gallery, Mud Root Ochre Leaf Star, Byron Kim paints bruises that radiate tenderness and hurt.
Photography and Foreboding in 1970s Japan
For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 offers an ambitious social and art history of a decade ignited by protest, shaped by global power dynamics, and visualized through new art forms.
Seeing Beyond “Kimono Wednesdays”: On Asian American Protest
When I heard that the Boston MFA was launching a dress-up social media campaign called “Kimono Wednesdays” based on a painting by Claude Monet, that a group of young Asian American protesters asked them to stop, that the MFA did and apologized, I thought it was an open and shut case.