Archive Room: Amalia Mesa-Bains & Archive Room: Irene Poon and Charles Wong
— Both exhibitions open August 6, 2026 —
Intimate single-gallery presentations drawn from the Special Collections at Stanford Libraries illuminate the practices of seminal Bay Area artists
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is pleased to present two solo exhibitions foregrounding the lives and oeuvres of three major Bay Area artists: Amalia Mesa-Bains (b. 1943, Santa Clara, CA), and Irene Poon (b. 1941, San Francisco, CA) and Charles Wong (b. 1922 - 2024, Belmont, CA).
Archive Room: Amalia Mesa-Bains, curated by Cantor Curatorial Assistant Jorge Eduardo Sibaja, and Archive Room: Irene Poon and Charles Wong, guest curated by Stanford art and art history doctoral candidate Ivy Kim Vương, bring together artworks, texts, correspondence, ephemera, and other materials, illuminating the life and work of artists who have profoundly shaped Chicano and Asian American art histories, respectively.
Marking the third iteration of the museum’s Archive Room series, these intimate, single-gallery presentations draw from the rich art historical resources of the Special Collections at Stanford Libraries to deepen understanding of each artists' life and practice. Mesa-Bains’s presentation explores the artist’s foundational scholarship, motivating beliefs, and how these were shaped by and took shape in her artistic practice, while the dual presentation dedicated to Poon and Wong foregrounds their lesser-known experimental works capturing reflections, windows, and quiet interiors whose deeply familiar settings range from a bustling Chinatown storefront to an intimate living room. The exhibition also charts, for the first time, the intergenerational artistic dialogue and eventual partnership that unfolded between the two.