“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA”

Major Exhibition Sheds New Light on the Art of Martin Wong On View at Wrightwood 659, Now – July 18, 2026 By Rieny G. Cualoping

Wrightwood 659 hosts exhibitions on socially engaged art and architecture, on issues facing LGBTQ+ communities, and on Asian art and architecture. Located in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in a building transformed by Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando.
Recently, I was treated to a Preview of the fantastical new Wrightwood 659 exhibition, “Martin Wong: Chinatown USA.” Located at beautiful 659 West Wrightwood Avenue, in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, the exhibition focuses on “an underexplored through-line in the practice of visionary Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-1999): his fascination with Asia through Chinatowns as personal, mythical cityscapes.Wong explored these spaces—filled with Asian art and architecture as adopted in the United States amid the explosion of street culture in San Francisco and New York in the late 20th century—as amalgams of memory, identity, and queer and pop-culture narratives.”
The first U.S. museum exhibition devoted to Wong since 2017, “Martin Wong: Chinatown USA” is curated by Yasufumi Nakamori, PhD, with Ashley Janke, Assistant Curator, Wrightwood 659. Nakamori is an experienced museum leader, curator and noted scholar of modern and contemporary Asian art from cross-disciplinary and transnational perspectives.
Presented by the Halsted A&A Foundation, the exhibition takes it title from the artist’s 1993 exhibition at the downtown Manhattan gallery P·P·O·W, which still represents the artist’s estate today. Only six years later, Wong died of an AIDS-related illness at the age of 53. Since then, his reputation has continued
to grow as a queer painter and poet who traversed identities and sampled a dizzying array of cultural references. Critical attention, however, has largely focused on his paintings of the Lower East Side, and the artists, poets, and immigrants in this neighborhood. Far less recognized are the Chinatown- and Asia-inspired paintings, drawings, and sculptures he created throughout his career.
Chinatown USA features more than 100 paintings, drawings, ceramic works, and photo collages, complemented by videos and artifacts, among many other subjects of interest.
For more information about this and other exhibitions at Wrightwood 659, please visit https://wrightwood659.org
Wrightwood 659 is open Fridays, 12 noon-7 p.m.; Saturdays,
10 a.m .- 5 p.m. Tickets are $20, available online and by advance purchase only. https://tickets.wrightwood659.org/events