FL1 – Ruyell Ho and Li Lin Lee: Language of Abstraction

Curated by Larry Lee

On View: September 20, 2025 – April 26, 2026

The Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC) is excited to present Ruyell Ho and Li Lin Lee: Language of Abstraction, featuring selected work by two artists of Chinese descent born in Asia now living in Chicago whose studio practice since the Seventies explore abstraction to directly and indirectly re-envision language visually.

In a city known for its own brand of Surrealist and Pop Art-influenced figuration, both continue to forge separate but parallel paths, doggedly creating their own lexicon centered on the form, structure, and mechanics that is the “body” of the written as ideogrammic and calligraphic over the past fifty years.

Ruyell Ho was born in Shanghai in 1936, and educated in Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States to attend college in 1955. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Ho was a professor of painting and lecturer at Bradley University. Ruyell was classmates as well as friends with the Chicago Imagists, or “Hairy Who,” including Roger Brown, Jim Nutt, and Ed Paschke and certainly shared the group’s sensibilities. His deep connections to the Chicago art community include having worked for over 20 years as an art and architectural photographer in addition to making and exhibiting his work. He has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Erie Street Gallery, The Illinois Center, The Center for Contemporary Art in Geneva, Switzerland and the Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, California.

Li Lin Lee was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1955. He and his family moved around Southeast Asia as political exiles before immigrating to the United States in 1962, eventually settling in Pittsburgh. He studied biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh and started his long creative arc in graphic design and fashion, before discovering a passion for art after he arrived in Chicago in the 1980’s. Lee has exhibited widely since in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

His paintings and prints are represented in museums such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Hallmark Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Lee is also represented in many corporate and private collections, including the Vera List Foundation, Prudential Insurance, Citibank, and the US State Department.

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FL2 Permanent Exhibition – Chinese American Veterans: Unsung Heroes

The newly expanded Veterans exhibit, Chinese American Veterans: Unsung Heroes, opened Saturday, November 6, 2021. Chinese Americans have a long history in honorably defending America having served in every major war and conflict since the Civil War.

A highlight of the exhibit is the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor awarded to Army PFC Lew Y. June of Morris, IL, who on January 18, 1945, in Schirrhoffen, France, died in battle by throwing himself onto a grenade to save his squad members. The Chinese American World War II Veterans Congressional Gold Medal of Honor was made possible through the efforts of Chinese American Citizens Alliance. Enacted as Public Law 115-337 in December of 2018, the first Midwest Region’s Chinese American Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony was held on October 23, 2021, in Chicago, where June and over 150 veterans were awarded this honor. In the brief period since enactment, approximately 4,000 Gold Medal honorees have been identified. Previous recipients include George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry S. Truman, the Native American Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Nisei and Filipino soldiers.

Called into service in early 1941 prior to the U.S. joining World War II, many Chinese Americans joined an air unit nicknamed “Flying Tigers” to defend against aerial attacks. An estimated 20,000 Chinese Americans eventually served in World War II in all branches of the Armed Forces and in all t heaters of war. They have been distinguished with individual citations from Combat Infantry Badges, Purple Hearts to Bronze and Silver Stars and Distinguished Crosses, including the Medal of Honor, as well as unit citations for valor and bravery.

Chinese American military service women were also indispensable to the success of World War II. Not allowed in combat, they performed essential functions such as intelligence gathering, flying critical logistics missions, training male pilots and ferrying combat aircraft, and providing medical care as nurses and rehabilitation therapists. Many women also joined voluntary service organizations to support the war effort.

World War II served as a pivotal point in Chinese American history. The exclusionary period starting with the Page Act in 1875, followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, that lasted well into the 1960s, began to lift with the Magnuson Act of 1943. Many who served in World ​War II were granted citizenship. The bachelor society that characterized Chinese American life to this point was transformed through the Chinese War Brides Act of 1946, when over 6,000 Chinese women were allowed to reunite with their husbands and fiancés in the U.S. The “G.I.” Bill of 1944 offered educational, housing and loan opportunities that addressed barriers many Chinese Americans faced previously.

Another highlight of the exhibit is an updated Honor Roll of Illinois Chinese American Military Service Men and Women. The number of names has almost tripled to 700 from the original roster. The public is asked to contact the museum with any additions to this list.

The history of the Chicago Chinatown American Legion Post 1003 whose effect on veterans’ post-war civilian lives, and community-building youth programs such as the Wah Mei Drum and Bugle Corps and the Boy Scouts, is also be featured.

Among the veteran portraits, original uniforms and documents, additional medals from other wars, and other museum artifacts are on display.

Pictured above: George T. N. Moy receiving the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor from Major General Robert G. F. Lee, with Congressman Danny Davis on the left.

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FL2 Film – My Chinatown: Stories from Within

Thanks to a generous grant from the Chicago Community Trust, the Chinese American Museum of Chicago is collaborating with the Chicago History Museum to bring its wonderful object theater and 16-minute video My Chinatown to the Chinese American Museum of Chicago! Hear the stories of the people of Chinatown – their journeys, their customs, their work, their families – from within Chinatowns borders.

CAMOC is adding a special feature to the exhibit: a look at family associations in Chinatown. As an outgrowth of the Chicago Chinatown Centennial Exhibit, we will be highlighting, on a rotating basis, the histories and artifacts of various family associations, including the Lees, the Wongs, and more.

NOTICE: My Chinatown: Stories from Within is unavailable for viewing.

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FL2 Film – Bluff City Chinese

On View: Every Saturday, 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM

Bluff City Chinese is a documentary following the intertwined journeys of two Chinese-American storytellers from different generations, who come together to recover and share the untold history of Chinese immigrants in Memphis, Tennessee.

Directed by Thandi Cai (Anna) and featuring their mentor and Delta Chinese elder, Emerald Dunn, the film dives into the layered and challenging process of reconstructing a community’s history from the ground up. Set against a backdrop of social and racial tensions, Cai and Dunn work to build an authentic record of Memphis’s Chinese community, navigating profound questions of identity, belonging, and intergenerational understanding along the way.

Learn more:
https://bluffcitychinese.com/

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FL2 Permanent Exhibition: Great Wall to Great Lakes: Chinese Immigration to the Midwest

The Chinese-American Museum’s permanent exhibit, Great Wall to Great Lakes: Chinese Immigration to the Midwest tells the stories of immigrant journeys to the Chicago area and beyond.

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FL2 — Rich Lo: Gold Mountain

On View: May – September 2025

Rooted in personal memory and cultural reflection, The Land of Gold Mountain explores the legacy of Chinese immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better future. From railroads and mines to laundries and kitchens, these immigrants labored not for glory, but out of care, responsibility, and hope for the next generation. This show reimagines the symbolism of gold in Chinese diasporic life—not a marker of greed or status, but as a reflection of determination, love, and yearning.

About the artist:

Rich Lo is a particularly special artist for Chicago’s Chinatown. A passionate advocate of the neighborhood and its place in American history, his work often reflects themes of cultural heritage and personal history, particularly influenced by his experiences growing up in Chicago’s Chinatown and his father’s background in Chinese opera. His Chinese Opera mural, one of the few murals in Chinatown by a Chinese American artist, graces the museum’s west wall.

Lo was born in Canton, China, where he, along with his six siblings, discovered a passion for drawing and painting. At age seven, he and his family emigrated from Hong Kong to the United States, finally settling in Chicago’s vibrant Chinatown. Lo’s artistic journey began in illustration, and balances his prolific commercial projects with fine art and public installations.

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FL2/FL3 Staircase — New Women

The CAMOC Archive Series proudly presents New Women, a special program celebrating International Women’s Day.

Since 2017, we have conducted a series of interviews with 18 women from Chicago’s Chinatown, documenting their oral histories and personal narratives. The collection features the voices of Anita Lau, Annie Lowe, Bernie Wong, Celia Cheung, Christine Woo, Elaine Louie, Esther Wong, Grace Chun, Josephine Luck, Mabel Moy, Mary Jean Chan, Marylin Leung, May Young Chin, Ruby Wong, Sharyne Moy, Sun Yee Moy, Ying Ye Lee, and Yuk Chi Lay.

To honor their stories, we are presenting a special installation to share these recorded histories alongside printed materials, displayed in the museum’s south-facing windows on our second floor. This initiative amplifies the voices and experiences of Chinatown’s women, whose contributions remain underrepresented in historical discourse.

In collaboration with Music of Asian America Research Center, we have also curated a special playlist, highlighting the diverse sonic landscapes shaped by women’s voices and artistry from the 1930s to the 1960s. We invite you to listen and engage with these powerful narratives.

Now listen to the “New Women” Playlist curated by Eric Hung, Music of Asian America Research Center:  https://tinyurl.com/ShanghaiSongs

Photos: Jacob Yeung

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FL4 — Spotlight Series

The Spotlight Series is an initiative to showcase recent and past work by emerging and mid-career artists of Chinese descent locally. Curated by Larry Lee, multimedia artist, art historian, educator, and curator, the project aims to introduce, promote and celebrate the divergent artistic visions and experiences of being Chinese in America looking at and reflecting upon our relationship to contemporary visual culture to a wider audience within our community and Chicago.

Check out our current and past Spotlight Artists!