Peripheral Visions in Abstraction: Recovering Bernice Bing, New Research and Perspectives
Session will present: On locationOver the course of her decades-long career, queer, orphaned, Chinese American artist Bernice Bing (1936–1998) produced a prolific body of dynamic Northern California landscapes that straddled abstraction and figuration, and played a vital role as a community arts organizer. Despite her significant contributions, her work has largely remained under-researched and underrepresented in U.S. museum collections. Situated at the intersections of multiple marginal positionalities within the White, male-dominated Bay Area painting scene of the 1960s–1990s, her practice has been at risk of historical erasure, with her paintings often endangered by unsafe storage conditions. Two decades after her passing, Bing is finally receiving long-overdue recognition through landmark efforts including retrospectives at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (2020) and the Asian Art Museum (2022), the acquisition and digitization of her archive by Stanford University Libraries, and a major 2024 exhibition at Berry Campbell Gallery that led to significant museum acquisitions, including by Crystal Bridges.
Facilitated by this renewed institutional access, this panel convenes four speakers who offer new research and curatorial perspectives on this visionary artist. Panelists explore questions: How might engaging with Bing’s work and archive complicate narratives of abstraction and identity? How can we move past reductive identity framings while acknowledging conditions of marginalization? And how might we ethically engage works, archives, and ephemera that have been historically neglected by institutions? This panel seeks to deepen and sustain critical engagement with Bing’s expansive career and reflect more broadly on the methodological and institutional stakes of studying historically marginalized artists.
Keywords:
Geographic Area: United States of America
Time Period: Twentieth Century
Topics: Abstraction
Topics: Asian American
Topics: Queer Studies
Chairs:
Amy Kahng
and
Chaeeun Lee, Graduate Center, CUNY
Discussant:
Nancy Lim
Abstract Submissions Closed