The Chinese American Arts Council honors Chen’s artistic and curatorial contributions to preserving and presenting Asian American LGBTQ+ history through The Web.

New York, October 10th, 2026 — The Chinese American Arts Council (CAAC) is pleased to announce artist Yukai Chen as the recipient of the 2026 Most Outstanding Asian Artist Award, recognizing his outstanding contributions to The Web: The Birth and Legacy of New York’s First Asian Gay Bar.

According to CAAC’s published history of the award, the Most Outstanding Asian Artist Award was established in 1981 to recognize exceptional achievement across artistic disciplines and distinguished contributions to the promotion and development of Asian arts. Its inaugural recipient was actress Li Lihua. Artists honored over the years have also included Yo-Yo Ma, Mei Baojiu, Lo Ta-yu, Zhang Junqiu, Tong Zhiling, and Liu Shih-kun. For more than four decades, the award has recognized artists for their professional accomplishments and cultural contributions.

Presented at CAAC’s Gallery 456 in 2025 and co-curated by Yukai Chen and Xiaojing Zhu, The Web brought together archival photographs, historical materials, and installation elements to explore the bar’s distinctive place in New York’s Asian American LGBTQ+ history. The exhibition illuminated a gathering place where nightlife, cultural expression, and community support intersected, offering opportunities for connection, solidarity, and belonging.

Chen’s contributions combined photographic expertise with archival research and oral history interviews. His work included scanning and editing historical photographs, helping shape the exhibition’s photographic selections, and conducting interviews that connected archival images with firsthand recollections. These efforts brought the personal experiences and community stories within the archive into focus, making an underrepresented history accessible to contemporary audiences.

Through this award, CAAC recognizes the artistic judgment, research, and creative interpretation Chen brought to the project. His contributions helped bring Asian American LGBTQ+ history into public view and encouraged audiences across generations to engage with questions of identity, belonging, and cultural memory.

Yukai Chen is a Brooklyn-based Chinese artist whose practice encompasses photography, archives, and oral histories. His work explores the relationships between personal experience, cultural memory, and the communities people build.

The Chinese American Arts Council is honored to present the New York premiere of the documentary Lisa Lu Plays Herself on Saturday, July 12, at 6:00 PM at the Walter Reade Theatre, Film at Lincoln Center.

Lisa Lu Plays Herself is an intimate portrait of the legendary actress Lisa Lu and her extraordinary artistic journey. From childhood dreams in Peking opera to Hollywood stardom, Lisa Lu’s path has spanned continents, eras, and art forms. Raised among opera legends in China, her ambitions were first deferred by family tragedy and war, which led her to an unfulfilling life in Hawaii. Refusing to abandon her passion, she reinvented herself as an actress in California, eventually landing major roles in Hollywood and groundbreaking Chinese-language films.

As a working mother, cultural pioneer, and acclaimed stage star, Lu navigated the challenges of being an Asian actress in the West, ultimately becoming a global icon. Now in her nineties, she reflects on a life shaped by resilience, artistry, and the enduring power of reinvention—still dreaming, still performing, and still inspiring audiences around the world.

About the Director – Mei-Juin Chen
Mei-Juin Chen is a Taiwanese filmmaker based in Los Angeles and Taipei. She is known for award-winning documentaries such as Shaolin Ulysses, The Worlds of Mei Lanfang, and the fiction film The Gangster’s Daughter. A USC-trained visual anthropologist, her films often explore the lives of cultural outsiders and creative pioneers navigating between East and West.

Director’s Statement
Lisa Lu Plays Herself is the first biographical documentary to center on the extraordinary life and legacy of Lisa Lu—an actress whose career bridges East and West, Hollywood and Chinese cinema, tradition and transformation. At 98, she remains a living testament to artistic resilience, cultural complexity, and the power of performance.

This film was born from a single, haunting reflection she once shared: “Foreigners treat me as a foreigner. Chinese people treat me as a foreigner. Everyone treats me with indifference.” That statement challenged me to explore not only her public triumphs but also the private tensions of identity, displacement, and belonging.

Lu’s story is not just about the roles she played—empresses, saints, widows, and exiles—but about how those roles mirror her own journey as a woman navigating stereotypes, nationalism, and gender expectations across continents.

Through intimate interviews, archival footage, and cinematic portraiture, Lisa Lu Plays Herself invites audiences to reconsider what it means to perform—not just on stage or screen, but in life itself. Has she shaped her roles, or have they shaped her?

This documentary is both a tribute and an inquiry: into a singular life and into the deeper questions it raises about culture, womanhood, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

Ticket Information
As an official partner of the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF), the Chinese American Arts Council is offering a limited number of complimentary tickets to the screening. Tickets are first come, first served.

Tickets may be picked up in person at the Chinese American Arts Council:
456 Broadway, FL3, New York, NY

For ticket details or further inquiries, please contact us at info@caacarts.org.

The Chinese American Arts Council warmly invites you to experience the world of Lisa Lu—her legacy, her stories, and her timeless spirit.

On October 10th, Chinese artist Zou Qionghui was honored with the "Asia's Most Outstanding Artist Award" in New York City by the New York Cultural Council, the Lincoln Center for the Arts, and the Chinese American Arts Council in recognition of Ms. Zou Qionghui's outstanding achievements in the field of art.

"The Asia's Most Outstanding Artist Award was first established in 1981. In the same year, because of the New York Lincoln Center awarded Elizabeth Taylor Honorary Award; Lincoln Center for the Arts proposed by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Lincoln Center for the Arts and the United States and Chinese American Arts Council jointly established the "Asia's Most Outstanding Performer Award", aims to recognize the authority of the field of the arts and artists and the promotion of the development of Asian art has made special contributions to the development of Asian art. The purpose of the award is to recognize artists of authority in various fields of art and outstanding individuals who have made special contributions to the promotion of the arts in Asia, and to select one person from a large number of candidates each year. The first "Asia's Most Outstanding Artist Award" was awarded to Li Lihua, who has won Golden Horse Awards: Best Leading Actress. And later artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Mei Baojiu, Luo dayou, Zhang Junqiu, Tong Zhiling, Liu Sikun, and so on, were honored, and now this award has a history of forty years, with a very high credibility overseas.

Friday, October 14, 2022
5-6PM Opening Reception
6-7PM Artist Talk & Exhibition Walkthrough

456 Broadway, 3rd floor
(elevator available)

Please join us for the Opening Reception and Artist Talk of Furong Zhang's solo exhibition Crossing the Dry Sea at Gallery 456.

Artist Statement:

My paintings deal with personal and collective emotions of being a first-generation immigrant in America, revolving around themes of alienation, displacement, and self-contradiction. I use a deconstructed and allegorical approach to create my painted scenes, incorporating my memories and experiences of my native country, China, as well as my current residence in America. My past experience during the Cultural Revolution in China, a time of social unrest, widespread propaganda, violence, and expected obedience to authority, has informed the underlying mood of my paintings and my questions of the place of the individual self in relation to its society. In my work I am interested in dualisms and tensions between the preservation of history and erasure, belonging and alienation, and material body and soul. I juxtapose symbols of construction, detritus, ritual, and ambivalence to reference my Chinese American immigrant experience and personal emotions that are in flux alongside historical and contemporary social environments.

About the Artist:

Furong Zhang was born and raised in Shanghai, China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1977 he attended the Shanghai Normal University, majoring in oil painting. He received his MFA from Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing in 1987. In 1989, Zhang was part of the controversial first China Avant-Garde art show at Beijing's National Fine Art Museum. During that time he participated in various exhibitions held at the Beijing and Shanghai Fine Art Museums. Since immigrating to America in 1989, he has attended residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and exhibited nationally and internationally at various museums and galleries, including Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Bellefonte Art Museum, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and Yale University. He currently lives and works in central Pennsylvania.

Grammy-nominated bass baritone Hao Jiang Tian speaks about his new book TURANDOT AT THE ARENA, a collection of essays, at a press conference held at CAAC.

....additional press coverage

LMCC is thrilled to announce an open call for 2023 Manhattan Arts Grants, a funding
opportunity for artists and communities! LMCC’s 2023 Manhattan Arts Grants application for
Manhattan-based artists, collectives and organizations is now open. Application deadline:
September 13, 2022, 5PM for projects taking place in 2023. Applicants eligible for City & State
funds can now request up to $10,000 in project support. LMCC is also excited to partner with
the Howard Gilman Foundation to offer additional project support to performing arts applicants.
Visit LMCC.net to learn more about Creative Engagement, Creative Learning, UMEZ Arts
Engagement, and to register for an interactive information session webinar this summer.
Chinese American Arts Council – 美华艺术协会 is hosting a Creative Engagement & Creative
Learning information session at Chatham Square Library on Monday, August 1 at 3:00PM. Meet
LMCC staff, learn about program requirements, ask questions and seek guidance related to
your project.
Creative Engagement & Creative Learning Information Session
Chatham Square Library, 33 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002
Hosted in partnership with Chinese American Arts Council – 美华艺术协会.
本次說明會全程以中文進行。
This session presented in Mandarin Chinese.
點此報名 | https://www.eventbrite.com/e/creative-engagement-creative-learning-tickets-375381705787
Attendance is required for first-time applicants to LMCC’s Manhattan Arts Grants.

In remembrance of the Chinese Opera Master Tong Zhi Ling, The Tong Xiao Ling Chinese Opera Ensemble will present beijng opera "The Matchmaker" at Flushing Town Hall.

Date: June 5th, 2022, 1pm
Location: Flushing Town Hall, Queens
137-35 Northern Blvd, Flushing, NY 11354

....more

Friday, April 8, 5-7PM
6-7PM: Nancy Huang will open with a poetry reading, followed by Rachel Hsu's Artist Talk, concluding with Q&A with Jiaoyang Li

456 Broadway, 3rd floor
(elevator available)

Please join us for the Opening Reception and Artist Talk of Rachel Hsu's solo exhibition Heart in My Mouth at Gallery 456.

Exhibition Statement:

Rachel Hsu’s solo exhibition, Heart in My Mouth, attends to the contradictions inherent in marginalized existence and explores the varied politics of and apprehensions toward assimilation and exceptionalism. By engaging language as a material, the exhibition negotiates racial identity and heightens the yearning that emerges from distance and displacement by gradually unfolding absence, relational ruptures, and slippages in translation.

Fetch the Moon from the Seabed (海底撈月) is a long-form poem that investigates yearning and immigration through language and translation. Taking the form of a Chinese language-learning workbook, the poem reveals the emotional and physical exertion that speaking a second language and cultural assimilation requires. Mental exertion is further heightened in the translation of emotional endurance into physical persistence in Tending. The work invites viewers to remove their shoes and walk across an expanse of river stones to experience the fluctuating pain and rejuvenation of reflexology. Arranged according to size, shape, and texture, moments of respite are diffused amongst acute pressure. A reimagined pressure point diagram is available as a takeaway—two distinct narratives reveal themes of tenderness and violence, pain and healing, grief and joy. Excellence is the Goal (the goal is death) further engages coexisting contradictions and calls for a critical examination of the relationship between exceptionalism, assimilation, and American violence. Weighed against Tou Thao’s participation in the murder of George Floyd, anti-Asian hate crimes, the Atlanta spa shootings, and attention to Asian lives, American assimilation and human value are inextricably tied to violence and death. The out-of-reach ship’s bell speaks to a grand, impossible ambition that requires immense effort. Commonly used on modern ships as a warning signal, the ship’s bell also recalls the voyage itself—of leaving and arriving. Just underneath the bell reads: I want so badly to survive this.

Whether it’s a slow traverse across space or an impossible reach, the exhibition Heart in My Mouth demands the effort of translation, healing, and critical self examination to be felt and endured. As Cathy Park Hong writes in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, “If you want to truly understand someone’s accented English, you have to slow down and listen with your body.” How can we better attend to one another? How can we care for our entangled pain and tenderness?

About the Artist:

Rachel Hsu is an interdisciplinary artist who works with visual art, language, and poetry. She received an MFA in sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and a BFA from Western Washington University. She has exhibited in New York and Philadelphia, and her writing has been published in Honey Literary and APIARY Magazine. Originally from Seattle, WA, she currently lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

RSVP for the opening here: https://forms.gle/1bjQSBams3T8xQmA7

Friday, February 4, 5-7PM
5:00PM Musical performance by cellist/composer Francesca Ter-Berg
5:30PM Artist Talk hosted by curator Kimberly Reinagel with virtual guest speakers art critic Robert C. Morgan, art historian Gail Levin, award-winning poet Mai Mang, and contemporary art researcher Fang Zhang joining via Zoom

456 Broadway, 3rd floor
(elevator available)

Please join us for Zhen Guo's Artist Talk at Gallery 456.

Artist Statement:

In recent years, my feminist art has turned to the concept of "mother" and its connection to women, men, and the world in general. There may be no daughters, sisters, or wives in our lives, but everyone has a mother, and “mother earth” is the giver and sustainer of all life. Mother and Earth are inextricably linked in tradition, philosophy, science, and our minds, just as they are in my art. Mother Earth and Human Mother (and all women) are surrounded by the destructive forces of our time.

“Muted Landscape” presents a vision of our planet that is both expansive and terrifying, a landscape as if viewed from miles high, defaced and stained by the gray color and the sheer height. Towering peaks merge with rivers, lakes, craters, and sheer walls, figurative but more abstract, losing their individual character and value. In reality, driven by population and industrial growth, unrestrained exploitation and pollution, our planet is riddled with holes and out of balance, disappearing in front of us without making a sound. Our Earth, the mother of all of us, silent as the pieces are dismembered and burned. So too, the mothers and women of this world, their bodies, their rights and their spirits, are constantly under attack. They are also told to "shut up" and their voices were muted so they can’t be heard.

About the Artist:

Zhen Guo was born in Shandong Province, China, and experienced the “Cultural Revolution” during her teen years. She graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of the China Academy of Art in 1982 and was hired there to teach in its Chinese Art Department.

Zhen Guo is one of the earliest explorers of ink art after the reform and opening up of China. She immigrated to the United States in 1986 and established Zhen Guo Art Studio in New York City in 1988. Guo has participated in many international art exhibitions and has long been committed to the research and exploration of contemporary feminist art.

Major auction houses such as Sotheby’s have repeatedly promoted her works. In recent years, Guo has curated and participated in: “Existence: International Women’s Art Exhibition” in Changsha, China; “Please Touch, Body Boundaries,” a large-scale exhibition at Mana Contemporary Art in the United States; “Asian Women Artists Exhibition”; at Jeonbuk Provincial Museum of Art, South Korea, and many more abroad and in the United States.

Zhen Guo now lives and works in New York City.

Saturday, December 18, 1-5PM
2:00PM Artist Talk
2:45PM Musical Performance

456 Broadway, 3rd floor
(elevator available)

Please join us for the opening reception of Zelene Jiang Schlosberg's solo exhibition Flâneur Redux at Gallery 456.

2PM - Artist Talk: A conversation between Zelene Jiang Schlosberg and Prof Miki Kaneda (Boston University)

2:45PM - Performance/Improvisation by Jamie Jordan, soprano

Exhibition Statement:

Nous sommes tous des flâneurs. After lockdowns and quarantines, the ability to cast about city streets with no clear purpose in mind other than moving one’s body and observing one’s surroundings is not to be taken lightly. And while it is still possible to assume the air of a dandy (Baudelaire) or a critic of modern life (Benjamin), wanderings during These Times seem to propose a new paradigm, one in which one scurries away from a fellow ambler, and in an urban environment decidedly devoid of bustle.

Given such an anxious context, the vibrancy of Zelene Jiang Schlosberg’s latest works might seem surprising, even welcoming. A general sense of abstraction under closer scrutiny leads to observations of helicopters, cats, doors, flora and most tellingly, alien(ated) creatures, which may or may not be self-portraits. Whether these icons constitute figurative comfort food or something more apprehensive and conceptual is up for grabs.

Jiang Schlosberg begins her art making process with sketches and then proceeds to cut canvases before applying acrylic paint and deciding on an ordering scheme. The idea of stacking, juxtaposing, and layering responds to her intense study of Old Master paintings, including triptychs, as well as the Eastern influence of Chinese ink paintings. The effect also responds to the sense of general repetition our recent times have produced: patterned itineraries without end, with discoveries made daily, even if in a desultory fashion.

About the Artist:

Zelene Jiang Schlosberg (b.1977) is a Chinese-American artist living and working in Chicago who has been hailed for her bold approach to art-making that has resonances in both painting and sculpture. Solo exhibitions include Chinese American Arts Council Gallery (NYC), North Central College (IL), University of Illinois at Chicago, East Central College (MO) and Woldt Gallery London. She has participated in numerous group shows, including at Zhoub Art Center, CICA Art Museum Korea and The Royal British Society of Sculptors. Her painting “Directions #0” was featured on the cover of composer John Liberatore's 2018 debut CD album, "Line Drawings” (Albany Records). Her works can also be seen in Artist Talk Magazine (UK), Studio Visit (US) and Art Market Magazine (Israel). An enthusiastic lover of contemporary classical new music, she frequently collaborates with notable avant-garde musicians, who also collect her work, in addition to several museums. She is a participant at Context Art Miami (2021) with Fabrik Projects Gallery. Jiang Schlosberg received a master’s degree from Beijing Normal University.

RSVP for the opening here: https://forms.gle/BKva3tkKoLxs8BrZ9

Friday, December 3rd, 6-8PM

456 Broadway, 3rd floor
(elevator available)


Please join us for a discussion by artist Chenlin Cai about his recent and past works, with focus on his exhibition "Body•Mark" at Gallery 456. Hosted by poet and artist Jiaoyang LI, who will lead the audience on a poetic journey in appreciation of the show. Get inspired by Cai’s paintings to create your own ekphrastic poetry. Refreshments will be provided.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I create paintings with visual narratives about relationships between humans and our environment, historical moments and contemporary events. I borrowed some thought-provoking historical moments from the album of time, extracted the images out from the original context, and placed them in the current time and space, thereby creating a visual contradiction and conflict. I visually express the effects of catastrophic events on the human body in a beautiful and poetic way.

My works fuse oil painting medium with traditional Chinese ink-painting expression. My unorthodox use of oil paint on nontraditional surfaces allows me to create artificial cellular structures that divide the images into a mosaic texture. I created a unique texture to mimic the biological cellular structure from an under-the-microscopic perspective. In these paintings, the organic microscopic structures and the macroscopic natural landscape combine in mystifying presentation of the dislocation and overlap of transparent materials.

The transparency of the material brings more visual expressiveness to the overlapping images, therefore, a new form of observation is created. This form expresses the biology of the image as a social metaphor. I try to bring a different visual experience for viewers to ponder the questions about the consequences of human behavior in a wider time-space continuum.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chenlin Cai is a multidisciplinary visual artist living in Philadelphia. Cai received his MFA from two world-renowned universities in fine arts, the Tsinghua University in China and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

Cai's works innovatively combine traditional Chinese ink painting with contemporary art expressions to create a unique visual image that fuses art and science. The uniqueness of his artistic style has caught the eye of collectors world-wide, including many Chinese and American collectors, and the Copelouzos Family Art Museum in Athens, Greece.

Cai has held solo exhibitions in Philadelphia and New York, including solo exhibition in Freeman's Auction Gallery, Philadelphia in 2018. Cai has participated in many art exhibitions such as New York Artexpo in 2021 and the 12th Florence Biennale in Italy 2019. Cai has won honors, including the “Excellent Artist Award” in “Eye Art•2017 International Youth Art Exhibition” in United Nations Headquarters, New York; and the “Coverly Smith Prize” in the Woodmere Art Museum’s 79th Juried Exhibition, Philadelphia.

Cai served as a judge for the National Youth Drawing Contest hosted by the World Journal for two consecutive years. Cai is also a productive mural artist. He has installed dozens of murals in the United States and China such as at Xuchang City Museum, Korean Cultural Center in Beijing, First Street Green Culture Park in New York, and 10th Street Plaza in Philadelphia Chinatown.

Cai is currently working with his artist team on creating a grand mural project for celebrating the 150th anniversary of Philadelphia Chinatown.

ABOUT THE HOST JIAOYANG LI

Jiaoyang Li is a poet and interdisciplinary artist currently based in New York. Her work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, British Council, New York Live Arts Center, The Immigrants Artist Biennial, Performa Biennial, Milan Contemporary Art Center, The 9th international Poetry Film festival, New York Movie Award and more. Her literary work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Blackbox Manifold, The Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel, 3:AM, Datableedzine, Harana Poetry, Chinese News Magazine, Spittoon Magazine, and elsewhere. She serves as the co-founder of Accent Accent, and the interdisciplinary poetic practice journal 叵CLIP.


Please RSVP to attend the Artist Talk: https://forms.gle/gdKJP226qNuF7qgQ8