The Museum of Chinese in America opens a new exhibition on Thursday, October 22, 2026: Hilda Shen: Their Landscapes, a one-person show of recent ceramic sculptures and prints by the Brooklyn-based artist. It fills the museum's Cheng Gallery at 215 Centre Street in Chinatown and stays on view through January 24, 2027.

The show also launches a new MOCA program called Solo Artist Projects, a series of one-person exhibitions of new work by artists of Chinese descent who live and work in New York City. Shen is the first artist in the series.

About the Work

According to the museum, Shen's sculptures and prints grow out of close observation of the natural world combined with a habit of taking forms apart. The pieces can read as old and new at once, as things found in nature or things made by hand, and as objects being built up or wearing away. MOCA connects the work to several threads: post-minimalist sculpture, the tradition of Chinese landscape painting, and the way architecture shapes space.

Shen was born in Minneapolis in 1954 and spent much of her childhood in upstate New York before moving to New York City in the 1970s. Her father grew up in Beijing and her mother in Hangzhou. She trained in classical music at Oberlin College before turning to visual art, and she now lives and works in Brooklyn.

Her sculpture, prints, drawings and installations have been shown around the New York City area as well as in Seattle and Beijing. Locally, she has made large installations at Wave Hill in the Bronx, the Tenri Cultural Center and Flushing Town Hall in Queens. She has held artist residencies at Yosemite National Park, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Bloedel Reserve and Willapa Bay AIR, among others.

A New Path for Local Artists

MOCA says Solo Artist Projects is meant to cover a wide range of mediums and approaches, and to include artists at different points in their careers: established names, emerging artists, people who live and work in and around Chinatown, and historical figures the museum believes deserve more attention. The museum plans to open a call for submissions in early 2027 for New York City based artists of Chinese descent, with details to be posted on its website.

The exhibition is supported by Bonnie G. Wong and Linda Wong MacLeman, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Also On View

Visitors who come for the new show can also see Ed Young's Bright Worlds: Gesture and Feeling in 60 Years of Picture Books for Children, which runs through January 24, 2027. MOCA describes it as the first U.S. retrospective of Ed Young (1931 to 2023), the Caldecott Medal winning illustrator of Lon Po Po. It brings together original art from 15 of his book projects, along with sketchbooks, family photographs and personal items. The museum's long-running core exhibition, With a Single Step, remains open as well.

More at MOCA This Week

The opening lands during a full week of programs at the museum:

  • Thursday, October 22, 7 to 8 p.m.: MOCA Performs: Echoes of Arrival: Becoming, conceived by director Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li. Immigrant artists from Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago tell their own migration stories through narration, poetry, music, dance and stand-up. Tickets are $20, or $15 for members. Another performance is set for Friday, November 6.
  • Saturday, October 24, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Chinatown: A Walk through History, a 90-minute public walking tour that starts in the museum lobby and traces the area from the Lenape settlement of Werpoes to the present, with stops that include some of the oldest streets in the neighborhood and its oldest general store. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for seniors 55 and up and students with ID; children under 5 are free. Tickets include museum admission, and advance RSVP is required. The tour is recommended for ages 12 and up.
  • Saturday, October 24, 2 to 4 p.m.: MOCACREATE: Journey to the West Shadow Stories with teaching artist Yu Rong, a Halloween season shadow puppet workshop built around the Monkey King and the White Bone Demon, inspired by Ed Young's illustrations. It is free with museum admission, and RSVPs are appreciated.
  • Friday, October 30, 6:30 to 8 p.m.: MOCA Talks with actress Ming-Na Wen on her cookbook Have You Eaten Yet? Family Recipes from a Restaurant Daughter, in conversation with restaurateur Annie Shi. Tickets are reserved through the museum's website.

How to Visit

The Museum of Chinese in America is at 215 Centre Street. Hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday; the museum has no public hours Monday or Tuesday. General admission is $15 for adults and $10 for seniors over 55, students with ID and visitors with disabilities. Members get in free, and New York City residents can buy pay-what-you-wish tickets online or at the front desk with proof of residency.

The Canal Street subway station, served by the 6, J, Z, N, Q, R and W trains, is a short walk away. For questions, call the museum at 212-619-4785.

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