"Hung Liu: History is a Verb" with Dr. Dorothy Moss

Please join us for the lecture "Hung Liu: History is a Verb" with Dr. Dorothy Moss, Director of the Hung Liu Estate, at 4:30 p.m. in Beam Classroom at the VAC. This program is being presented in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Hung Liu: Happy and Gay on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through May 31, 2026.

Organized by Georgetown University Art Galleries, and curated by Dr. Dorothy Moss and Georgetown graduate students, Hung Liu: Happy and Gay features works by Hung Liu which adapt and subvert Maoist propaganda cartoons that were published during the 1950s. In the series, Liu revisits cartoons of her youth that were published in children's books and primers (known as xiaorenshu). Like the Dick and Jane readers circulating in the United States during the postwar era, the illustrations were used to socialize children by instilling values such as hard work, family unity, and patriotism. Liu's reformulation of this palm-size historic childhood imagery as large-scale, richly-painted contemporary canvases not only turns mass-produced illustrations into paintings but also raises questions at the intersection of ideology, propaganda, and education. Liu invites viewers to think critically about the words and images that shape our collective identities, challenging us to reimagine them, a form of rewriting history.

Image: Hung Liu, Red Flag Flowing, 2012, Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches. © Hung Liu Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

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