Archive Generation: Godzilla Asian American Arts Network

Presented by NYU Special Collections and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

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To celebrate the publication of Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001 (Primary Information, 2021), NYU Special Collections and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU welcome editor Howie Chen and founding members Margo Machida and Ken Chu for a virtual conversation on Godzilla’s forebears and origins, and the role of collaborative archival initiatives in preserving the legacies of arts collectives. Also joining the conversation will be James Hoff of Primary Information, and Nicholas Martin of NYU Special Collections, which holds the Godzilla Archive.

Accessibility note: Live captioning for this event will be provided. For more information or additional access requests, please contact Nicholas Martin (nicholas.martin@nyu.edu).

Ken Chu left the arts in 2006 after twenty plus years in the field where he worked both as an exhibiting artist, nationally and internationally, and an administrator in arts philanthropy. Chen was the program director for visual arts and emerging fields (1999-2005) at the Creative Capital Foundation. He was one of the key architects in designing its grants program. In 1989, Chen co-founded Godzilla, Asian American Art Network. He would like to express his upmost gratitude to the artists, friends, and colleagues who made it such an extraordinary time in American art history.

Howie Chen is a New York–based curator engaged in collaborative art production and research. A founding director of Chen’s, a townhouse gallery in Brooklyn, he has held curatorial roles at the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1. His writings have been published by Primary Information and Badlands Unlimited and have appeared in magazines such as Artforum, Frieze, and Art in America. Chen is the editor of the anthology Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network 1990-2001 (Primary Information, 2021), a comprehensive collection of writings, art projects, publications, correspondence, organizational documents, and other archival ephemera from the trailblazing Asian American artist collective that sought to stimulate social change through art and advocacy. As a partner in curatorial consultancy Chen & Lampert, Chen co-publishes an advice column appearing monthly in Art in America. He is currently on the faculty of the NYU Steinhardt School. Chen graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 2004.

Margo Machida is Professor Emerita of Art History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Born and raised in Hawai‘i, she is a scholar, independent curator, and cultural critic specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. She has lectured widely on her research both nationally and internationally, and served as a curatorial advisor for the inaugural 2017 Honolulu Biennial. Her book, Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2009) received the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. Machida received the 2021 College Art Association Excellence in Diversity Award, and is a co-founder of Godzilla: Asian American Art Network (1990-2001).

James Hoff is the Executive Editor and Artistic Director of Primary Information.

Nicholas Martin is the Curator for the Arts & Humanities at NYU Special Collections