Geography: United States
Founded: 1989
Address:1890 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
AAWAA was founded in 1989 by Betty Kano and Flo Oy Wong to promote the visibility of Asian American women artists and to serve as a vehicle for personal expression with a view of Asian American cultures and history from a women’s perspective.
Over the years AAWAA has encouraged dialogue across cultures and generations and built community among Asian American women artists through exhibitions, publications, readings, speakers’ bureau and the distribution of visual and audio Educational Presentation Packets. By educating art establishments that have historically excluded works by Asian American women artists, including major museums, galleries, collections and publications, AAWAA has provided access to these venues and furthers the goal of establishing the place of Asian American women in American art history.
AAWAA has given lectures and visual presentations at more than 23 institutions throughout California. Its publications are used in academic curricula in Art, Ethnic and Asian American Studies departments. AAWAA’s 2007 anthology, Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women has been adopted in courses at University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. As a group, and as individuals, AAWAA has exhibited work at numerous galleries, museums and community organizations, including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, SomArts Cultural Center, Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Euphrat Museum of Art at De Anza College, C.N. Gorman Museum at U.C. Davis and the St. Supery Winery in Napa. AAWAA hosts workshops, salons and maintains an email group for its members. More than 100 artists have been members of AAWAA, including Flo Oy Wong, Wendy Yoshimura, Bernice Bing, Nancy Hom, Betty Kano, Kathy Aoki, Dawn Nakanishi, Katherine Westerhout and Lenore Chinn.
AAWAA raises the visibility of the Asian American Art, promotes dialogue across cultures and generations and builds community among Asian American women artists. Our members are from native and foreign-born backgrounds, with a wide range of Asian ethnicities and ages. While the majority of our artists are in the San Francisco Bay Area we also have members throughout the country.