'Heartmind' Now Open!
Our newest art exhibition is officially open! Last Wednesday we celebrated the opening of HEARTMIND: Portraits from the Bob Eng Lee and Asian American Arts Centre Collections, which is presented in collaboration with Think!Chinatown as part of Chinatown Arts Week.
HEARTMIND features highlights from the vast and venerable collections of the Asian American Arts Centre (AAAC) and its co-founder and longtime Executive Director Bob Lee. Both the AAAC and Bob are integral to Asian American art, history, and activism in Chinatown, and we're honored and humbled to be able to host this selection of striking portraits from these collections, and to celebrate the opening with friends, old and new.
In attendance was Eleanor Yung, Bob's wife and co-founder of the AAAC. Also a founding member of the pioneering Basement Workshop, Ms. Yung is a choreographer and first opened the AAAC as a dance theatre. Over the years a visual arts program was added, and the organization evolved into the AAAC we know today.
We also had the chance to meet artist Sung Ho Choi.
His piece in the show, "Mind," features the Chinese character xin, which means both mind and heart, and is the inspiration for "heartmind," the term Bob Lee uses to describe the feeling of being Asian American. This in turn inspired the title of the exhibition
We were also happy to see friends like Lisa Gold (with her cute pup Maka of course), executive director of the Asian American Arts Alliance, our partner on the Futures Ever Arriving exhibition back in May at Chelsea Market.
It was also great to see Chee Wang Ng, the curator of our last show, Corky Lee on My Mind, as well as some artists from that show, Ed Cheng, Kyle Lui, and Antony Wong.
We also wanted to shout out our sponsor Moshi for their generosity and delicious yuzu sparkling drinks.
Finally, many thanks to curators Lisa Yin Zhang, Simon Wu, and Jayne Cole for their expertise, dedication, and hard work; Yin Kong, Amy Chin, and everyone at Think!Chinatown for being (as usual) such wonderful collaborators; Bob Lee for sharing his precious collections; and everyone who joined us at the opening.
Be sure not to miss the companion exhibition to HEARTMIND at the Think!Chinatown art space at 1 Pike Place. You can also learn more about the history of the AAAC by reading Bob's statement.
HEARTMIND at Pearl River is on view through Jan. 9, 2022. The exhibition is free and open to the public every day between 11 and 7 in our art gallery which is located in the back of our SoHo store at 452 Broadway between Grand and Howard. See you soon!