The Cantor’s Archive Rooms—a new, pilot presentation at the museum—highlights the rich art historical resources available right here at Stanford. These small, single-gallery, single-artist installations feature engaging selections from the robust holdings of artist archives at Special Collections at Stanford Libraries and enhance our understanding of the artistic process. The inaugural Archive Rooms installations will feature Lynn Hershman Leeson and Bernice Bing, two individuals deeply influential in the history of art in the Bay Area, United States, and beyond.

A San Francisco-based filmmaker and multimedia artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson is widely recognized for her prescient work in media-based practices and commentary on the relationship between people and technology. This single, small-gallery installation features a selection of videos, photographs, and ephemera related to select projects from the 1970s from the Lynn Hershman Leeson papers to consider the genesis of Hershman Leeson’s career-long exploration of ideas of personhood and identity, as well as her consistent challenge to rethink what and where art can be.

Bernice “Bingo” Bing was a queer Chinese American artist, community arts organizer, and arts administrator active in the Bay Area from the 1950s until her death in 1998. In the large-scale, gestural paintings that defined her oeuvre, Bing combined features of expressive abstraction, traditional Chinese calligraphy, and landscape painting to create emotive works attuned to color and movement. This single, small-gallery installation highlights material from the Bernice Bing papers and is presented by the Cantor’s Asian American Art Initiative (AAAI). The installation features a selection of highlights from the archive from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, examining Bing’s use of art and writing as tools for self-exploration and discovery.