The curator Alexandra Munroe introduces the show by saying:

While Europe has long been recognized as the font of mainstream American art movements, the exhibition explores an alternative lineage of creative culture that is aligned with America’s Pacific vista—Asia. Vanguard artists consistently looked toward “the East” to forge an independent artistic identity that would define the modern age—and the modern mind—through a new understanding of existence, nature, and consciousness.

An exhibition review by Andrew Solomon states that conventional wisdom by then still held that contemporary art in the East was either derivative or unsophisticated. Solomon recalls that Munroe’s 1994 exhibition, Scream against the Sky: Japanese Art After 1945 was “one of the first major museum shows in New York to correct that perception.” While being interviewed for The Third Mind by the Los Angeles Times, Alexandra Munroe also emphasizes the importance of the West Coast, long overlooked in the narrative of American art history for the same reason: “Traditionally, modern and contemporary and avant-garde art have always been discussed in their relationship to Europe. The natural bias has been New York and East Coast.”

Obviously, Munroe has been seeking for an alternative lineage and geography of American art history. But by no means is she the first pioneer.

To read the full essay, please click here to access the PDF file.