Part of Wong’s Storefronts, a series of monumental paintings, Houston Street depicts a desolate Lower East Side storefront at full scale, with its corrugated metal door padlocked shut. The work memorialized New York during a period of rapid change, when the city was facing a “war on crime” and waves of socio-economic gentrification. Wong’s shuttered storefront contains a realm beyond our immediate grasp. After he made this series, the artist commented: “Even now it’s like the moment in these paintings never existed.”
2024
Kids label from 2025
What type of store do you imagine is hiding behind this gate?
Martin Wong was a painter who lived on New York City’s Lower East Side. This is one in a group of life-size paintings he made of shuttered storefronts in his neighborhood.
Imagine you are walking by this storefront on the street. With your friend or family member, take turns sharing things you notice about it.
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Martin Wong
American, 1946–1999 4 works onlineBorn in Portland, Oregon, and raised in San Francisco, Martin Wong rose to fame in New York City during the 1980s for his striking paintings of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
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In the Shadow of the American Dream
Gallery 202In 1980s New York, artists produced work from the front lines of an embattled social landscape marked by urban desolation, financial precarity, and the AIDS epidemic.
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