BAMPFA is pleased to announce Dr. Yasufumi Nakamori as BAMPFA’s 2025 endowed Lijin Lecturer. His presentation connects two important aspects of the museum’s collection—contemporary and premodern art from Asia—and promises to cast new light on the art of Martin Wong (1946–1999).

Wong’s work was the subject of the museum’s major 2017 exhibition Martin Wong: Human Instamatic; his quietly compelling painting Silence is currently featured in To Exalt the Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection. In his research, Nakamori traces the development of Wong’s work Chinatown USA and others through the artist’s interest in the art of Asia, manifest in both his own collecting and his familiarity with premodern Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he worked in the 1980s. The talk will include an exploration of the relationship between East Asian calligraphy and Wong’s signature calligraphy-style poetry.

A noted curator and scholar, Nakamori joined the Asia Society NY in August 2023 as Vice President of Arts and Culture and Director of the Asia Society Museum. He previously served as Senior Curator, International Art, at the Tate in London, where he led the development of the photography collection and organized, among other exhibitions and displays, Zanele Muholi and the 80’s: Photographing Britain. In addition to a PhD in the history of art from Cornell University, Nakamori holds a law degree from the University of Wisconsin.