Street Stories – Graffiti and the Legacy of Martin Wong

Be part of an engaging panel discussion that delves into the evolution of graffiti as an art form and the lasting influence of visionary artist and collector Martin Wong. Tracing its origins in New York City’s subway tunnels and streets to its eventual recognition in galleries and museums, graffiti has had a profound impact on urban culture and artistic expression. Prior to the panel discussion, explore Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection, which provides a window into a vibrant subculture of young creators and highlights previously unseen treasures from the Museum’s major collection of graffiti-based art.

Join Hrag Vartanian, Editor-in-Chief of Hyperallergic, as he moderates an insightful panel featuring artist Lee Quiñones, PPOW Gallery Co-Founder Wendy Olsoff, and Sean Corcoran, Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at MCNY. Together, they will explore the social and political forces that propelled graffiti’s ascent and its evolving impact. The conversation will also shine a light on Martin Wong’s pivotal role in preserving graffiti’s legacy, particularly through his vast collection that played a key part in bringing the art form out of the underground.

 

About the Speakers
Sean Corcoran is the Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. He previously served as Assistant Curator of Photography at George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. His exhibitions have included Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs, Brooklyn: The City Within: Photographs by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, the current Above Ground: Art from the Martin Wong Graffiti Collection. He has written extensively on photography and graffiti, contributing to more than two dozen publications, including essays for City as Canvas, Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection (Skira Rizzoli), Elliott Erwitt: At Home and Around the World (Aperture), and I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York (Thames & Hudson), Loisaida: Street Work 1984-1990 by Tria Giovan (Damiani) and has edited an upcoming publication on the photography of Robert Rauschenberg due in the summer of 2025.

Wendy Olsoff co-founded P·P·O·W alongside Penny Pilkington in the first wave of the East-Village Art scene in New York City in 1983. Since its inception, the gallery has remained true to its early vision, exhibiting work in all media with a focus on politically and socially engaged work, figurative painting and ceramics. After meeting Martin Wong in the early 1980’s, P·P·O·W began representing him in 1990, and has managed his estate since his passing in 1999. The gallery has continuously championed Wong’s legacy, exposing his work to younger communities through intergenerational exhibitions and collaborations extending outside the art world.

An alumna of William Smith College (1978), Olsoff has lectured extensively throughout the United States at universities and museums. In 2012, Olsoff was a recipient of the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award for the gallery's dedication and support of artists in the LGBTQ+ community and her ongoing leadership in the fight against censorship. She is a founding Charter member of the Council for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and served on the Board of Directors of the Art Dealers Association of America as well as Visual AIDS.

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief of Hyperallergic, which he co-founded with his partner, Veken Gueyikian. In 2024, he was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism at Yale University and was awarded a Susan C. Larsen Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Arts Writing by the Rabkin Foundation.

Lee Quiñones is considered the single most influential artist to emerge from the New York City subway art movement. He is a celebrated figure in both the contemporary art world and in popular culture circles, faithfully producing work that is ripe with provocative socio-political content and intricate composition.

Quiñones was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised in New York City’s Lower East Side. One of the originators of street art, Lee started painting on New York City’s streets and subway cars in the 1970s. Over the next decade, he would paint over 100 whole subway cars throughout the MTA system, then shift to a studio-based practice. Lee was instrumental in moving street art above the ground when he created the first handball court mural in 1978.

In 1980, Lee had his first New York show at White Columns, ushering in an important era as spray paint made the transition from moving objects to stationary canvas works. His work was included in the critical “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show (1981) at PS1; and, in “Documenta #7” in Kassel, Germany (1983). In the past decade, his drawings and paintings have been shown in “East Village USA” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2005), “The ‘S’ Files” at El Museo del Barrio (2010), and “Looking at Music 3.0” at the Museum of Modern Art (2011). He has had solo shows at MoMA PS1, Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, the Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner, Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, and Nicole Klagsbrun, among others.

Quiñones’ paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, The Perez Art Museum Miami, the Groninger Museum (Groningen, Netherlands), and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam, Netherlands).

This event is produced in a partnership between the Museum of the City of New York and Hyperallergic.

Event Logistics:

• This event will take place in our Ronay Menschel Hall (Ground Floor).  
• Please contact programs@mcny.org with any questions or ticketing issues.
• All sales are final; refunds not permitted. Exchanges and credit for future programs only. Programs and dates may be subject to change.