Current Projects
A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project
Recognizing the critical need for documenting this unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic and the myriad of ways it has and will impact Asian/Pacific American communities in New York City and nationally, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, in collaboration with Tomie Arai, Lena Sze, Vivian Truong, and Diane Wong, has developed the A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project with NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives serving as the collection’s repository.
How the Kishi/Sun Collection Helps Us Understand Anti-Asian Violence
With support from the Yale Graduate Impact Fellowship for the Humanities, Jacinda Tran (Visiting Scholar, A/P/A Institute at NYU) looks back to state archives during this preceding moment of heightened anti-Asian violence. The cultural artifacts and ephemera she finds in the Yoshio Kishi and Irene Yah Ling Sun Collection are palpable reminders of just how embedded anti-Asian culture is in the formation of the United States.
Online Formations: Asian American Digital Politics
How do Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders create social and political change in digital spaces? This survey assessed the landscape of Asian American and Pacific Islander politics in relation to contemporary social movements and digital technologies. Respondents were asked about the role of technologies in organizing, building political community, and shaping racial politics. This report is part of a collaborative project between 18 Million Rising and Rachel Kuo (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), and is supported by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.
Virtual Asian American Art Museum (VAAAM)
The Virtual Asian American Art Museum (VAAAM) is a multi-year, inter-institutional digital humanities project. Rather than a “bricks and mortar” museum, VAAAM presents dynamic, curated materials from US and international repositories to visualize, analyze, and contextualize Asian American art history. VAAAM facilitates the discussion of key topics emerging from the developing discourse of digital art history, American art, national and international standards for museum and institutional collection sharing, and digital access while fostering the transnational narrative of Asian American art.
The Asian/Pacific/American Documentary Heritage Archives Survey
The Asian/Pacific/American Documentary Heritage Archives Survey is the first systematic attempt to map existing and potential Asian/Pacific American archival collections in the New York metropolitan area. The project seeks to address the underrepresentation of East Coast Asian America in historic scholarship and archives by surveying the collections of community-based organizations and individuals. The project’s database serves as a central resource for learning about and accessing these collections, which have been surveyed by A/P/A’s Graduate Archives Scholars. This project is a collaboration between A/P/A and Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University. It was generously funded from 2008-2011 by the Metropolitan New York Library Council.
NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange
Each year, the NYU Global Asian/Pacific Art Exchange brings together scholars, curators, and artists and a group of core collaborative scholars from participating partner institutions. The gatherings and working sessions aim to generate research, publications, exhibitions, and other projects to strengthen international networks of scholars and curators, and create ongoing dialogue between colleagues, arts communities, and wider publics in the United States, Asia, Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Middle East in the expanding field of Global Asian and Pacific Visual Cultures.
The East Coast Asian American Art Project
Founded in 2010, the East Coast Asian American Art Project (ECAAAP) promotes increased scholarship and engagement with Asian American art and history by ensuring the preservation of and access to the papers of Asian American artists and arts professionals. Through ECAAAP, the A/P/A Institute at NYU has surveyed and facilitated the donation of several artists’ papers to NYU Libraries. The artists include Tomie Arai, Ming Fay, Krishna Reddy, Shu Lea Cheang, Martin Wong, Yun Gee, and collectives EPOXY and Godzilla. Papers belonging to David Diao and Zhang Hongtu will be accessioned by NYU Special Collections in the near future. Artist archives from this initiative have been used in new scholarship, exhibitions, and digital projects. Additional artists surveyed as part of ECAAAP include H.N. Han and Bing Lee.
Past Projects
Climate Working Group
The Climate Working Group (CWG) is a creative assembly of researchers, scholars, artists, activists, and organizations working to address our climate crisis while bridging the sciences, arts, humanities, and policy. The CWG works on collaborative short-term and long-term projects for public audiences, and serves as a network for resource sharing, feedback, and opportunities to engage across disciplines.
The A/P/A Institute at NYU was the institutional sponsor of the Climate Working Group through August 2019. For updates on CWG, please visit its website.
Radical Archives
Radical Archives was a two-day conference (April 11-12, 2014) organized around the notion of archiving as a radical practice, including: archives of radical politics and practices; archives that are radical in form or function; moments or contexts in which archiving in itself becomes a radical act; and considerations of how archives can be active in the present, as well as documents of the past and scripts for the future. It was curated by 2013-14 A/P/A Institute Artists-in-Residence Mariam Ghani and Chitra Ganesh. The conference was organized around four threads of radical archival practice: Archive and Affect, or the embodied archive; Archiving Around Absence, or reading for the shadows; Archives and Ethics, or stealing from and for archives; and Archive as Constellation, or archive as method, medium, and interface.
Resources from the conference are available here.
Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN)
The Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN) is a network of scholars, artists, curators, arts writers, and graduate students interested in Asian American art and art history. The purpose of this network is to share ideas and information toward advancing new research, critical writing, and curatorial efforts involving modern and contemporary Asian American/Asian diasporic art and visual culture.
DAAN encourages a broad transnational and trans-diasporic as well as domestic orientation. Whereas ‘Asian American’ refers specifically to the American (read US experience), the network situates itself within the Asian diaspora, bringing the discussion to a global level that includes Asian American art.
The A/P/A Institute at NYU was the institutional sponsor of DAAN through August 2019.
Re-envisioning American Art History: Asian American Art, Research, and Teaching
From July 9-28, 2012, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU convened an NEH Summer Institute entitled, “Re-envisioning American Art History: Asian American Art, Research, and Teaching.” The twenty-five college and university professors that participated deepened their understanding of pivotal developments and critical issues in Asian American art history and visual culture studies, while gaining access to specialized archives that enhanced their research and teaching in the humanities.