Simon Leung and Yong Soon Min Featured in ARTnews Awards 2025 Best Thematic Museum Exhibition

Artists recognized for the second consecutive year in ARTnews Award–winning exhibitions

For the second consecutive year, UC Irvine Department of Art professor Simon Leung and the late professor emerita Yong Soon Min are featured artists in an exhibition recognized by ARTnews as Best Thematic Museum Exhibition. The 2025 honor was awarded to Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969–2001), presented at 80WSE Gallery at New York University, as part of the ARTnews Awards.

“I am honored to be a participant in a show that again received the Best Thematic Museum Exhibition, especially because I share my participation with our late and much beloved colleague Yong Soon Min, one of the greatest mentors to younger artists I have ever known,” said Leung. “Yong Soon and I were both born in Asia, immigrated to the U.S. as children, graduated from the University of California, continued our studies at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York, and returned to the UC — to the same campus, Irvine — as professors. “Our similar trajectories were spaced roughly a decade apart, but I am struck by how UC played a critical part in educating us as students and then supporting us as artists and professors. The title of the show, Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969–2001) framed artists within a city and a community, but I think it is also apt in that ‘legacies’ also describes our roles at UC Irvine, where we were given an opportunity to nurture younger artists, just as we had been ourselves, and that, to me, is the true honor.”

Image: Simon Leung, Squatting Project/Wien, 1998, pigment print, courtesy the artist. Photo courtesy of 80WSE, NYU.

Curated by Howie Chen, Jayne Cole Southard, and christina ong, Legacies was on view at 80WSE, New York, from September 11 through December 20, 2024. The exhibition was billed as the first institutional survey dedicated to artists of Asian descent working in New York City, examining a pivotal period from 1969 to 2001. Featuring more than 90 artists, the exhibition explored how Asian American artists shaped artistic, political and community-based movements while complicating assumptions around identity and representation.

Simon Leung is a professor in the UC Irvine Department of Art, with affiliate appointments in critical theory, Asian American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and global peace and conflict studies. His interdisciplinary practice has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. Yong Soon Min, who passed away in 2024, was a professor emerita whose influential career as an artist, curator, and educator examined history, memory, and cultural identity. She is widely recognized for her lasting contributions to contemporary art and Asian American studies.

Image: Yong Soon Min, Kindred Distance 4,1995, Dye sublimation print, courtesy of Yong Soon Min Estate.

To learn more about Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969–2001), visit the ARTnews website here. To learn more about Simon Leung, visit his Department of Art bio page here. For more information about Yong Soon Min, visit her Department of Art bio page here.