Marci Kwon: "Hallucinating Chinatown"

We invite you to join the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago for this upcoming lecture as part of the 2025-26 Smart Lecture series. The lecture is Thursday, November 13th in CWAC 157 at 5:00pm CT with a Q&A session and reception to follow.

In 1990, Martin Wong began a series of paintings about San Francisco Chinatown. The artist later claimed it took him twenty years to acquire the necessary skills to paint the neighborhood. Drawn from Kwon's in-progress book Making San Francisco Chinatown, this talk will explore the representational challenges posed by the neighborhood to Wong's protean painting practice, illuminating Chinatown's aesthetic imaginary of forgery, fabrication, evasion, and performance.

Marci Kwon is Associate Professor of Art History and Marta Sutton Weeks Faculty Scholar in the Humanities at Stanford University. At Stanford, Kwon is on the steering committee of Modern Thought & Literature and American Studies, and is affiliated with Asian American Studies, East Asian Languages & Cultures, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She is co-director of the university's Asian American Art Initiative.

Accessibility
Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact taiahw@uchicago.edu for assistance.

Support
The public lecture is sponsored by the Department Art History and generously supported by The Smart Family Foundation.