Saturday, November 8, 2025
AAAC Beginnings to Recent Transitions

Asian American Arts Centre: Collections and Resources

This article and another accompanying it was first published in CUNY FORUM in the first section of Volume 11:1 summer of 2024.  The first article however, did not include illustrations as it is here.

 It is a reflection on my experiences coming into New York City, and developing the visual arts programs of Asian American Arts Centre. The current transition of AAAC toward a community arts research center, a synopsis of nearly five decades in a few pages is accompanied on this blog by illustrations from some of the memorable events. It is followed by a second article on ten Asian American artists.   --  Bob Eng Lee


Beginnings (1970s)

I REMEMBER BASEMENT WORKSHOP (“Basement”) on Elizabeth St, people

moving file cabinets into place. That’s where I met Eleanor Yung, my future mate, and 

started coming across the Holland Tunnel from New Jersey more often. This was

when I saw an I Wor Kuen (IWK) demonstration in Chinatown against tour buses.

Everyone present were videotaped by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Associa-

tion (CCBA). I joined IWK, and later participated in their contingent to shut down

the Pentagon. I attended the 1970 Asian American conference at Yale University, and

joined Basement’s Asian Tactical Theatre group and performed on the streets.



For the second Chinatown Street Fair (Health Fair), I designed the poster. I was

the community liaison at the Lower East Side Health Council South for Gouverneur

Hospital, and worked together with the late Dr. Thomas Tam (1946-2008) who was

mounting a demonstration to hire two hundred Chinese-speaking hospital staff.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) responded by closing

the hospital instead. After six months, HCC relented after recognizing the right of

patients to receive care in a viable language. I wonder if this was one of the sparks that

initiated what has become standard practice—recognizing the rights of patients in

all hospitals.


















 Regina Lee and Bob holding the Street Fair 
poster I designed in 1972

In 1974, Eleanor Yung and I got together and she established Asian American

Dance Theatre (AADT), later becoming the Asian American Arts Center (AAAC).

We moved into the third-floor loft at 26 Bowery which became the site for our not-for-

profit, serving the community with cultural services for the next thirty-six years.


                      Board Retreat in the mid 80s when our name was Asian American Dance Theatre AADT
                         and Tom Tam was a board member along with Sharon Hom and others.


              Elaine Chu stands at our front door at 26 Bowery next to Sol Leitner's shoe store which 
            when sold became the MacDonalds facade. The walnut tree sign I made which had then to be dismantled and brought up
            to our third floor doorway, greeted visitors for the thirty-four years that this site was our organizational home. 

When the local Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program 

where I managed free art classes was defunded, we moved the life drawing class

to AADT and started a visual arts program. Around this time the New York State

Council on the Arts (NYSCA) sought to initiate a service organization for many of the

Asian arts groups that were developing, and I managed to chair the Alliance for Asian

American Arts and Culture for six years, mounting the “Roots to Reality: Asian Americans 

in Transition” event in collaboration with Henry Street Settlement in 1985 and 1986.


                          Roots to Reality 85' and later 86' invited many visual artists to participate selecting from 
                        AAAC's Artist Archive like Ming Fay's Epoxy group.  They are standing before their installation
                  at Henry Street Settlement House where their exhibitions took place. The Archive was just beginning 
                         to grow back then and become inclusive of many many artists. 


In the early ‘80s, the Asian American Arts Centre was one of a very few places to

feature visual art. For around eight years, I sought to build on Basement’s roots and commit

 to the arts in Chinatown, to get across the notion of Asian American art as

full of potential, worthy of attention and study, and capable of becoming vital and

significant.


                 The Eye to Eye panel and exhibition event held in 1983, the first major event to kick off the visual arts program series.  From left: Lydia Okumura, David Diao, Kit Yin Snyder, Lucy Lippard, Margo Machida, John Woo, Robert Lee moderator.  JohnYau came later. His story about the dilemma of the Soho artists who could not decide to change his Asian name became the topic of the evening.  


Reframing Public Art (1980s)

Public Art in Chinatown 1988

This exhibition featured art projects designed specifically for the Chinatown com-

munity, including sculptures, models, drawing, and site-plans. “Public art is one of

the best ways to raise issues of cultural significance in an ethnic community. Asian

Americans have yet to identify an artistic direction in public art reflective of their

community’s identity, character or contemporary outlook... This exhibition seeks to

bring public attention to this question and to the development of a modern Asian

American spirit.

Among the fourteen artists who I brought together to create proposals for selected sites around Chinatown Toshio Sasaki's Sun Gate would always remain just a proposal and never be built, but it directly challenged the traditional architecture of the city if not the country. pointing as it did to the cosmos.  However some thirty-six years later we see a similar idea realized in Australia by the artist Lindy Lee, the work called - Ouroboros      https://nga.gov.au/art-artists/sculpture-garden/lindylee-ouroboros/#about



Martin Wong was exhibited on six occasions at AAAC but the Latino community on Ave A, B, C, D hold him is such high regard, he has done so much for them in his paintings that he is a special hero. Thus making a large puppet portrait of him for their annual celebrations is not unusual. photo Bob Lee 




Since 1979, Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans (CAPA)’s mission celebrates Asian Pacific American.  
AAAC participated annually in CAPA spring event through its Folk Arts program where the Folk and Traditional  
arts became increasingly important to its work and its message, coming to the practice of integrating folk arts into 
its contemporary exhibitions.  


China: June 4, 1989     

This exhibition, beginning as “WITNESSES: China,” was mounted in response to the student uprising movement at Tiananmen Square in Beijing China, achieved much notoriety, with 300 artists participating. “Tiananmen Square... is an issue that has affected everyone. The spectacle of human courage, the nature of freedom, the crush-ing of life and its ideals, the issue of human rights, of censorship and its revival here, these issues cannot be met with silence, with political and economic expediency. An acute awareness of universal aspirations has been raised for every culture and political persuasion. The meaning and the drama of China is for all to see and respond.”  


This is the installation of the exhibition at PS1 in Long Island City in the spring of 1990.  It is less than half of the nearly three hundred artists works who participated, the second spiral of the doors adjacent is not pictured, nor is the room of fifty smaller art works, nor the special room for Mel Chin's Forgetting Tiananman, Kent State, and Tlatelco that consisted of three hydrostone slabs/doors.  ( See http://new.artasiamerica.org/works/435/60)  
 Nor for Nam June Paik's door which had to stand alone. 


At the start of the Tiananmen Sq exhibition A few days after June 4th LinLin aka Billy Harlem asked to use AAAC gallery to work on a mural 24 foot long.  By the summer's end it was completed.  It did move to Blum Helman gallery in Soho in the Fall of 1989.  The exhibition at PS1 in the spring of 1990 was restricted to the doors so the mural was not included. 



Ng Sheung Chi's book Uncle Ng Comes to America  was co-edited by Eleanor Yung and Bell Yung. It was from Ng Bok's singing Muk'Yu songs that I learned about my ToiShan culture and heritage. Because of the video AAAC produced and toured Uncle Ng was the first Chinese American to be awarded the National Heritage Fellowship in Washington DC in 1992 where he received a standing ovation. (See - http://artspiral.org/uncle-ng.php)


And He Was Looking for Asia: Alternatives to the Story of Christopher Columbus Today (1992) 

I sought to reframe the Asian American context during the 1992 quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, by offering alternatives to his myth. With historical speculations that accumulated over many years for me on the formation of Europe and its many nomadic peoples rooted in the vastness of the Eurasian continent with their oral animist traditions that were transformed in the early Middle Ages in collision with the literati of the Mediterranean world. This then set the stage that led to colonialism, to conquest, to how we come to understand the phrase “man as the measure of all things,” and beyond.  (for more of this exhibition's theme see AAAC blog:  Historical  Essays from AAAC Exhibitions )


This is the original installation at AAAC for Barbara Takenaga's work Skidding TowardAmerica, exhibited in the Quincentennial exhibition in 1992 And He Was Looking for Asia.



Meant for the Silk Road in the Anthropocene -a planned sequel to the And He Was Looking for Asia exhibition - by Yoland Skeete.  The only public document where AAAC’s 2021 incomplete Silk Road project is discussed is Jayne Cole’s PhD thesis. For ths reason it is made accessible here for those who are interested:

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/19580295-ec6b-4250-a63e-177b1382e924/content


Four Bronze Vessel replicas of the original bronzes created during the early dynasties of China's formation. It's through the deep time of the historical Silk Route connecting East to West that best enables a way to grasp our Asian American presence in the West as well as our relationships in the context of the ecological crisis of the world  today. 



Cultural Advocacy (1990s to 2000s)

Ancestors 1995 

When the The Association of American Cultures (TAAC) was formed, I was invited to join their national board of directors. We dialogued on the struggles of Black, Hispanic/Caribbean, Native American, and Asian arts organizations at the biannual national conferences. This led to the “Ancestor” exhibition, stating “...we recognize the wealth of our heritage as Americans and encourage the act of paying homage to all the Ancestors of this Land.” After eight years on their board, our collaboration with the gallery Kenkeleba House in 1995 brought together Black, Asian American, and Black-Asian partners and artists, such as Lily Yeh and Simone Leigh. Later Allan Crite from Boston was brought to the 1996 TAAC conference in St. Louis.


 A board meeting of The Association of American Cultures (TAAC) in 1988. From the left is Evonne Colman Rory, Kimberly Camp, Alec Simpson, Barbara Bayless, John Paul Batiste, Barbara R. Nicholson, Eliud Hernandez, and standing is Louis Leroy. (For TAAC's connection to the Asian American Arts Alliance - A4 see
 https://artsandculture.google.com/story/SAURYj2JV1ipsw? hl=en )    Photo by Bob Lee
John Paul Batiste, Barbara R. Nicholson, Eliud Hernandez, and standing is Louis Leroy.


As former board members John Paul Batiste, Barbara R. Nicholson, & Bob Lee were 
invited back to the 2010 TAAC conference in Chicago.


Ancestors (1995)


The eight artists who were among those who participated in the Ancestors Exhibition in 1995, in collaboration with Kenkeleba House. From the left: Simone Leigh, Toshinori Kuga, Lisa K. Yi, (Heejung Kim did not participate), Yoland Skeete, Lotus Do Brooks, Camille Billops, Howardena Pindell, & Helen Oji.




Simone Leigh Pots (1995). Simone is on the far left in the image preceding this one.


This later led me to advocacy with many other POC groups, participating in New York City’s Cultural Equity Group (CEG), and later with the Peoples Cultural Plan (PCP) in 2017 which offered alternatives to the City’s CreateNYC cultural plan.



The Cultural Equity Group of NYC where I participated for over seven years. Taken before 

one of the murals at the Martin Luther King and Betty Shabazz cultural center in the Bronx,

                          1st Row L to R:  Linda Walton, Sandra Garcia- Bettancourt, Dowoti Desir, Marta Moreno Vega

                          2nd Row L to R: Martine Martin, Voza Rivers, Bill Aguado, ??, Dr. Greg Mill     photo: Bob Lee





Saeri Kiritani's Gold Rice installation was part of the exhibition Fractured Fairy Tales: 
the 16th Annual exhibition in December 2006   photo: Bob Lee



“Detained”  2006

In 2006, the exhibition “Detained” was mounted for the Arab, Muslim, and South Asian community, affected by post-9/11 Islamophobia. The following year, the “Mixed Skin” exhibition was presented given the growth and attention bi-racial people were receiving, and seeking to answer the question of what it means to be of Asian hybridity. The wholeness we demanded for ourselves as an Arts Centre became clear as of value to the mainstream of society. 


Chaplain James Yee stands in the center surrounded by his family and others including Steve Yip and myself.  Six portraits on the wall are by the Visible Collective/ DisappearedInAmerica.org
James Yee, a former chaplain for the U.S. Army stationed at Guantanamo Bay who was arrested on unsubstantiated espionage charges and detained in solitary confinement for 76 days in 2003. Yee, a New Jersey-born Chinese American who converted to Islam, spoke out against the torture and unjust incarceration of Guantanamo’s Muslim detainees to whom he had been assigned to administer spiritual aid—and was tortured by his own country in return.
For more see:   https://artspiral.blogspot.com/2018/07/detained-in-america-casting-unflinching.html



In 2001, artist Kip Fulbeck began traveling the country photographing multiracial individuals of all ages and walks of life. After photographing more than 1,200 people, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) mounted a new exhibition for him, entitled Hapa.me — 25 Years of The Hapa Project, where some of the original subject portraits are shown two decades later together with current subject portraits. Above is one of the recent portraits. AAAC first exhibited Kip in 1990 and in May 1993, and then in June 2007 in the Mixed Skin exhibition.   He has become well known for his book Kip Fulbeck: Part Asian, 100% Hapa 





Christina Seid Statement, one among eighty red panels mounted on the fence encircling Columbus Park, Here community people hanging out on the corner of Bayard St and Mulberry St.  in "America’s Chinatown Voices“ 藝 匯 唐 人 街 “ in the summer of 2009. The painted panels for community people, to express themselves in written or painted images.  Artists: Nathalie Pham & Avani Patel



Danny Yung


During AAAC’s final exhibition, Danny Yung, Basement Workshop’s founder, was in town, and gave us an opportunity to gather his many friends and hold a party for him. A few years later, we introduced Danny at the New York City Asian American Student Conference as the art pioneer he was, having been recognized by Germany and UNE-SCO for his innovative work in theatre, both contemporary and traditional. His “Tian Tian Xian Shang” (TTXS) figure was prominently displayed on the National Mall in Washington, DC during the 2014 Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, as well as a huge structural installation, “The Bamboo Flower Plaque.”                                                                                                                  (See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/asianamericanartscentre/albums/72157646017233882/ )

Hundreds of artists from several major cities each received a TTXS or blank boy canvas enabling them to create their own embellished version of Tian Tian. This was very much like Danny’s creation of Basement Workshop, where creating your own project was welcome.




The last exhibition the Centre held (at our 26 Bowery location) was in 2009, marked by the launch of artasiamerica.org, an online artists archive created through 9/11 funds, and introduced a portion (170 artists, around 10%) of the larger physical archive of the artists we had collected since 1982.  (See http://new.artasiamerica.org/about)




AAAC In Transition  


Asian American Arts Centre is in a transitional stage.


To understand this I should remind readers how we started, that it was not only the visual artists

contemporary exhibition program that AAAC initiated, but also the artists archive program that

began in 1982. These two programs meant to be long term, central to build a place for an Asian

American visual art presence. Given that the interest at that time in Asian American art was nil (if

any at all), I knew the archive would be necessary to provide the next generation with the means to see how this direction had begun. 


It has taken many years for the artist archive to gradually grow to its current size and contribute to the significance of the field.




For the Annual Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown AAAC participated in 2013 by creating a winning Majong tile hand and dance performance to march in the community’s parade along its whole route.  It was quite a spectacle with an unforgetable impression on all viewers. We owe this innovative event to dear friends and colleagues, Karen Hwang, Brian Zegeer, participating interns and staff members.



After 9.11 funding became available to develop our online artist archive, Artasiamerica.org. This

introduction to the public could be done after several years with 170 artists, 10% of the archived

artists.


Given our roots were in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown community traditional Asian folk arts

became the way to make space for contemporary art through a parallel annual program of folk and Lunar New Year festivities. In 1984 the exhibition program started with ‘Door Gods and Other Household Deities’ and Dunhuang Cave Paintings by Zhang Hongtu. http://artspiral.org/1983-1984.php


The permanent collection of artist work came about almost accidentally without funding or

foresight. With the China: June 4 exhibition in storage in the early 90s and without knowing when

our commitment to it would be resolved, this storage facility made the collection of donated artists works possible. It took many years and happenstance to gather and implement the archiving of the contemporary art collection, which we managed separate from the folk art collection that came about in its own way.




For the 30th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square in 2019, AAAC announced the transfer of hundreds of artworks to the California based Humanitarian China organization. Humanitarian China, a non-profit organization incorporated in California, by Fengsuo Zhou (currently director of Human Rights in China), Zhao Jing and Gang Xu, student leaders from the Tiananmen movement, joins together with AAAC to renew the purpose and vitality of this effort.  Liberty Sculpture Park near Los Angeles, has become the new home of these precious artworks.


Many years later after 2009 when the landlord’s ongoing eviction process caught up with us the

Tamiment Library of NYU agreed to take and preserve the multitude of boxed records, files, and

documents including the artist archive files. For the artwork collection we sought out university

museums, however this was a time-consuming process that became nearly fruitless particularly

during the Covid years.


The 25th Anniversary Exhibition In Commemoration of the Tiananmen Square 1989 Student

Movement was mounted in Chinatown in a Broome Street gallery in 2014. For the 30th anniversary in 2019 synchronicity brought AAAC together with Humanitarian China who took nearly a hundred twenty artworks, mostly doors to continue their work of supporting political prisoners in China and bringing attention to the ongoing human rights situation in China. http://artspiral.org/june4.php



For several years TIC has engaged with AAAC to present art exhibitions and record oral histories on the Asian American art movement in the '70s and '80s. The Heartmind exhibition, held at Pearl River Mart and T!C’s Pike St studio in Oct of 2021, began Think Chinatown’s intergenerational relationship with the AAAC and its art collection enabling Simon Wu, and Jayne Cole and Lisa Yin Zhang to visit the collection and co-curate this exhibition. 




AAAC Permanent Collection was moved in mid 2023 to Flushing. At the end of
2024 the office of AAAC on Norfolk Street where the Artist Archive was housed was also moved.


We lost our home and our gallery of nearly thirty four years by 2010, the task of finding new homes for all the resources we had gathered - the artist archive files, the art collections, the library of art books and catalogues, and the records of all the programs we had done, the preservation of these cultural resources became an awesome undertaking. 

Luckily the Tamiment Library of NYU agreed to archive the records of all our programmatic files. Other institutions like museums, philanthropic institutions that had underfunded community organizations, were simply not ready to recognize, and adapt to the presence and significance of people of color, the creation of their material culture and its impact on the tenor of nearly thirty years of societal discourse.



This art piece is by Thomas Aprile, one of the many doors that were moved by Fengsuo Zhou of 
Humanitarian China to continue the goals of the China: June 4th exhibition. 



During several of these years of struggle we worked with ThinkChinatown participating in their

events especially during my tenure on their board. Their commitment to the well being of the

community and the central role the arts play in their outlook has been special, unique and a joy to see. 


Their use of our archive and art collection in their exhibitions demonstrated that an

intergenerational relationship is possible. How this manifests in their programing and all that they

do is remarkable.   (see heartmind.ThinkChinatown.org) 

(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D474ax0Y0H8yJhEReO_xirgsgPpqcj9de88udtZ0FDE/edit )



To give recognition to all those who have passed through AAAC, its interns, staff, teachers, artists, dancers, students, advisors, board members, parents, community people,  audiences, visitors, and funders. We thank you and express our appreciation to you for all that you have meant to us. From left to right:  Chi Lee, Eleanor Yung, Winnie Li, Kanako Iwase in front, Adliana Bahrin, ?,?, Anton Yupangco, Karen Hwang, ?, Bob  


Thus the decision was made to donate the art collection, the art books and educational materials

and all other cultural resources to ThinkChinatown. In this way the legacy of AAAC will continue and transition to serve the next generation of community activism. Its historical records will provide a rich vein of research materials accessible to others yet also provide a basis to develop and give shape to a cultural research facility truly committed to the well being of its Chinatown community.  Such an institution, in seeking operational principles designed for this perspective will innovate in ways yet to happen.


A three year grant from Mellon Foundation has enabled this process to begin.

For myself this mean I will be working with ThinkChinatown to turn this transition into a reality. I

trust they will find the artists, curators and other culture workers to meet the challenge on this our horizon.


Bob Eng Lee












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