Photographs That Set the Stage
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Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera
Tufts University Art Gallery,
January 21 to May 22, 2016

Exhibition Catalog
Chrysler Museum of Art/
Grey Art Gallery/Lyon Artbooks

BACK IN THE DAY, SoHo was a dirty place. Young refugees from the provinces squatted in cold-water lofts, went to parties, saw all the best bands, and made great art. You really had to be there. Actually, it was a little more complicated than that, but the myth of downtown New York in the 1980s stands on a factual foundation. From a trove of over 100,000 photographs—the massive archive of artist Tseng Kwong Chi—comes this powerful new exhibition and catalogue. Known in his lifetime as a photographer, Tseng emerges from this show as a radical innovator in performance art—playful, campy, and utterly unforgettable.