Martin Wong Collection

These images of Martin Wong's work form the core of the Martin Wong Catalogue Raisonné (MWCR), a collaborative project between Stanford Libraries (SUL) and the Martin Wong Foundation. The MWCR is an online, comprehensive compilation of finished artworks by Martin Wong. It is framed by scholarly essays and includes detailed information about each individual work such as provenance, exhibition histories, and more. The essays further contextualize Wong’s work with installation documentation, photographs of the artist with his family and friends, selected personal research photographs by the artist, and various ephemera.

Martin Wong was a bi-coastal Asian American artist who was born in Portland, OR, but grew up in San Francisco, CA. He matriculated at Humboldt State University and was active in various media before relocating to New York in 1978, where his paintings were closely associated with the then burgeoning Lower East Side art scene. He returned to San Francisco in 1994, and died there of AIDS-related illness in 1999. His works are represented in prominent collections including the Chicago Art Institute, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, M+ in Hong Kong, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art. This collection of finished works represents the majority of his mature work along with some early examples of student work, including original artwork in ceramics, works on paper, acrylic paintings and constructions. The collection includes filmmaker Charlie Ahearn’s 18-minute profile of Wong created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and a 1991 audio-recorded San Francisco Art Institute lecture in which Wong discusses key works and the issues that inform them.