Young Hollywood Was Asian: The Pioneers Who Made Motion Pictures (May 1–31, 2024)
Curated by Katie Gee Salisbury, this installation in the Meatpacking District outdoor dining area featured archival photographs of pioneering yet lesser known AAPI figures in Hollywood. Included were Hollywood’s first AAPI heartthrob Sessue Hayakawa, Filipina movie star Elena Jurado, Korean American actor Philip Ahn, Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, and more.
The installation accompanied two other exhibitions curated by Katie: "Not Your China Doll: A Retrospective of Anna May Wong's Trailblazing Career" in the Pearl River Mart Soho gallery and "Not Your China Doll: Art Inspired by Anna May Wong" in Chelsea Market.
View highlights from the installation.
About the curator
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn.