Among his collection were pieces from 1980s New York-based graffiti artists including Rammellzee, Keith Haring, Futura 2000, Lady Pink, and Lee Quiñones.
(meta data) TITLE: City as Canvas | Museum of the City of New York # City as Canvas ### Traveling 1220 Fifth Ave at 103rd St. Buy Tickets Become a Member #### Back to Past Exhibitions ## The first time exhibition of works from the expansive street art collection of Martin Wong. Martin Wong, an East Village artist and collector of graffiti art, amassed a treasure trove of hundreds of works on paper and canvas—in aerosol, ink, and other mediums. The artists, including Keith Haring, Lee Quiñones, LADY PINK, and FUTURA 2000, were seminal figures in an artistic movement that spawned a worldwide phenomenon, altering music, fashion, and popular visual culture. The exhibition City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection includes over 150 works on canvas and other media, along with photographs of graffiti writing long erased from subways and buildings. Wong, who died of AIDS in 1999, donated his collection to the City Museum in 1994.City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection will run from February 4 through September 21, 2014. The companion publication for City as Canvas is sponsored by Mrs. Florence Wong Fie and The Martin Wong Foundation. Education programs in conjunction with the exhibition are made possible by a grant from the Keith Haring Foundation Inc. "Writing Was on the Wall, and Some Still Remains," Ken Johnson, The New York Times "A Museum Honors the Glory Days of Graffiti Art," Rita Braver, CBS Sunday Morning "City as Canvas: An Exhibition of New York Graffiti Art," Ariella Budick, Financial Times "City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection," Alex Fialho, Art Forum "City as Canvas Celebrates the Golden Age of Graffiti," Mike Dunphy, Metro New York Read the press release. If you are interested in hosting the exhibition at your museum, or to reserve a slot on a tour, please contact us at travelingexhibitions@mcny.org or 917.492.3472.
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Martin Wong
Biography.:Career.
By mixing affection, fascination, and distortion in these pieces, Wong exemplified "a tourist idea, an outsider's view" of Chinatown that was prevalent for those distant from the reality of the city. 
 Wong was a collector and connoisseur of everything from graffiti to Asian antiquities. For a time in the 1980s he made ends meet by buying underpriced antiquities at Christie's and selling them at Sotheby's for a fairer price. Wong amassed a sizable graffiti collection while living in New York and with the help of a Japanese investor, he co-founded with his friend Peter Broda the Museum of American Graffiti on Bond Street in the East Village in 1989. During this time, graffiti was a highly contested form of art and city officials had removed much of what had previously been in the New York City Subway system. In response, Wong set out to preserve what he considered to be "the last great art movement of the twentieth century." The Museum held two exhibitions but would only last for six months as a result of real estate difficulties exacerbated by an economic recession related to the market crash in October 1989. In 1994, following complications in his health, Wong donated his graffiti collection to the Museum of the City of New York.