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| Tianmei (Amy) Wang (design) and Johannes Lu (fabrication), PHOENIX (BONGHWANG), 2025 |
USC Pacific Asia Museum's "Mythical Creatures" is like no other exhibition the 55-year-old institution has done. Drawing loosely on the tropes of commercial pop-up museums, it's a series of immersive, tech-forward, artist-designed environments. It's an interesting mix of 24 contemporary artists, and their efforts make the most of a university museum budget and a 1925 building that isn't exactly suited to this sort of thing. The show also incorporates a bestiary of about a hundred works from the permanent collection. Despite the title, the theme is immigration as much as fabulous beasts. The creatures represent traditional wisdom useful to those encountering new lands and cultures.
Who is "Mythical Creatures" for? It's certainly family-friendly, and for the very young, it might be a perfect introduction to the museum experience. A family group can walk through the environments at their own pace, without feeling they're missing too much. But for those interested, there's serious art, new and old.
The signage puts much of the information in the words of an "Uncle," who speaks in verse. At times he comes off more patronizing than avuncular, and he may be too long-winded for young attention spans.
"Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry" runs through Sep. 6, 2026. Dave Young Kim curated.
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| 22WINTY (fabrication), Jin Chan, 2025 |
Two mirrored rooms are the show's set pieces. One holds Amy Wang's resplendent phoenix (top and bottom of post). The other features three-legged toad Jin Chan, a Scrooge McDuck-turned-Robin Hood, who shares his wealth with the deserving. With its gilt and mirrored walls, the toad's faux infinity room represents the "gold mountain" that early immigrants imagined America to be. No artist is credited for this museum commission, just a fabricator who goes by a handle. I gather that artist-curator Dave Young Kim is the auteur.
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| Tanuki Censer (Japan), 20th century. USC Pacific Asia Museum |
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| Greg Ito, My Memories of You Are an Island (detail), 2025 |
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| Lauren YS, Nine-Tailed Fox, 2024 |
At the age of 1000 years, a fox gains its ninth tail and becomes the consummate trickster of East Asian folktales. In Korea, the nine-tail fox hunts human prey by assuming the form of a beautiful woman. Lauren YS's Nine-Tailed Fox is a lenticular print. Artists have been exploring that "gimmicky" medium since Warhol, but this is the most razor-sharp transformation I've seen.
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| Rangda mask (Bali), 20th century |
The immersive dazzle upstages most of the small, refined permanent collection works. Two that do hold their own are both from Bali: a mask of a demon queen and a carving of a winged lion.
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| Singha (Bali) late 19th century |
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| Yi Meng, The Departure, 2026 |
Yi Meng's
The Departure is a virtual reality film shoehorned into a room not built for it. Visitors sit in airline seats.
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| At center: Dave Young Kim and Michael Gatmaitan (graffiti) and Timothy Rossiter and Carson Giles (fabrication), Neighborhood Tanuki, 2025 |
Grace Nicholson's elegant salon is now almost unrecognizable. The graffiti replicates that of Asian street gangs of the 1980s to early 2000s.
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| Wendy Park, On the Stove, 2023 |
A stage-set room simulating an Asian immigrant's first L.A. apartment features three Wendy Park paintings of humble American meals.
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| Installation view of PHOENIX (BONGHWANG) |
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