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Public Domain

Pauline Vinson and WPA/Federal Art Project, San Francisco

Chee Chin

1935

Scroll

Chee Chin

1935

Physical Qualities Crayon lithograph with scraping, Sheet: 409 x 511 mm. (16 1/8 x 20 1/8 in.) Image: 312 x 380 mm. (12 5/16 x 14 15/16 in.)
Credit Line The United States General Services Administration, formerly Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, on extended loan to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Object Number L.1943.9.726
Pauline Vinson foregrounded landscape painter and printmaker Chee Chin S. Cheung Lee (1896–1966) in this view of a WPA workshop, challenging racist and antiimmigrant assumptions about who counts as an American artist. Born in Guangdong Province, China, Lee was banned from obtaining U.S. citizenship by a long history of laws— beginning in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act—designed to restrict immigration from Asia. Minnetta Good and Ruth Chaney also used the longstanding subject of the artist’s studio to valorize the creative work of women, who were often marginalized in the art world. Good’s self-portrait Artist at Work shows the artist painting along to her record player, surrounded by the tools of her trade. Chaney’s writer waits somberly for inspiration with pen poised.
Cindy Medley Buckner, Art in a Day's Work: Prints from the WPA. Baltimore Museum of Art, 11 June-24 September 2000.

Virginia Anderson and Robin Owen Joyce, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA," November 5, 2023 - June 30, 2024.

Inscribed: RECTO: LL margin (pencil): 'Chee Chin'; LR margin (pencil): 'Pauline Vinson'. VERSO: TL (pencil): '#1696 - gr. 2'; C: BMA stamp; BL (pencil): '604-695'.

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