Asian American history, in photographs

Posted Thu, 10/02/2008 - 9:12am by Matt Itelson

Irene Andersen, a longtime staff member in the Art Department and an alumna, is a noted practitioner and historian in Asian American art. Her photographs of Asian American artists appear in several new books and two exhibitions.

"Memories of the Universal Café, 1965," taken at a long-closed restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown, appears in "Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970" (Stanford University Press). Edited primarily by Art Professor Mark Johnson, it is the first comprehensive study of the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian ancestry active in the U.S. before 1970. A companion exhibition, co-curated by Johnson and also including Andersen's photograph, opens at the de Young Museum in San Francisco on Oct. 25.

In addition, Andersen's 1996 photograph of Minė Okubo appears in a University of Washington Press biography of the artist, writer and social activist who repeatedly defied conventional role expectations for women and Japanese Americans. Andersen also has photographs on display at the SF State Art Department Faculty Exhibition in the Fine Arts Gallery.

Andersen co-curated the groundbreaking 1995 exhibition "With New Eyes: Toward an Asian American Art History in the West" in the Fine Arts Gallery at SF State. Her first book, "Leading the Way: Asian American Artists of the Older Generation," was published in 2001.

In the Art Department, Andersen is responsible for maintaining the department's vast slide collection. The collection has grown from about 36,000 slides in 1965, when she joined the SF State staff, to more than 300,000 today.

Photo: courtesy of Irene Andersen