Witness Hung Liu

Hung Liu: Witness brings together the artist’s intimate and large-scale works from SFMOMA’s collection, from her most significant paintings made in China during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution from 1966–76 to those created in the U.S. during the 1990s and 2000s. Experience the exhibition before it closes with short talks by Rosana Castrillo Diaz, Maryellen Herringer, Yulia Pinkusevich, and Lava Thomas, each of whom shared a close connection with Liu. At the time of Liu’s death in 2021, she was professor emerita at Mills College in Oakland, where she had taught since 1990, influencing and guiding generations of Bay Area artists.

About the Speakers

Rosana Castrillo Díaz (b. 1971) lives and works in San Francisco, California. Castrillo Díaz pursued her Licenciatura in Fine Art from 1990–93 at the Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, and received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1996 from Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH; a Post-Baccalaureate degree in 1999 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; and a Masters of Fine Art degree in 2003 from Mills College, Oakland, CA. Selected public collections include Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; UCSF Mission Bay Campus, Community Center, San Francisco, CA (Permanent Installation); University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Castrillo Díaz served as an Artist Trustee at SFMOMA from 2018–21 and is currently a member of the Conservation and Collections and the Education and Community Engagement Committees. Castrillo Díaz is represented by Anthony Meier Fine Arts.

Maryellen Herringer was born and raised in Bakersfield, California. She graduated from Vassar College and Berkeley Law and had a 30-year career as a business lawyer. She currently serves as a Vice Chairman of the Board of SFMOMA and Chair of the Governance Committee. Maryellen has always loved and collected art, but regretted never having studied art history. Maryellen began auditing classes at Mills College in 2000 and put together her own art education, taking undergraduate art history classes and theory-based MFA classes. She became friends with Mills students, including Rosana, and faculty, including Hung Liu and Yulia. She audited Liu’s class on the practices of painters and became a great friend and admirer of Hung Liu’s.

Yulia Pinkusevich is an artist and educator born in Kharkov, Ukraine. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, her family fled the eastern block as refugees, immigrating to New York City. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Stanford University and Bachelors of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. Yulia has exhibited nationally and internationally, including site-specific projects executed in Paris, France, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a solo exhibition in London coming in 2024. Yulia’s art is in the public collection of the de Young Museum, Stanford University, Facebook HQ, Google HQ, Recology, and the City of Albuquerque, among others. Yulia is an associate professor of art at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California. She lives and creates works on unceded Ohlone territory.

Lava Thomas’s multidisciplinary practice amplifies visibility, empowerment, and healing in the face of erasure, oppression, and trauma. Her work is held in various permanent collections including the US Consulate General in Johannesburg, South Africa; the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; SFMOMA and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, NY; Spelman College Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA. Thomas is represented by Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco.

Accessibility Information

Lightweight portable stools are available for seating during this gallery program.

Accessibility accommodations such as American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and assisted listening devices are available upon request 10 business days in advance. Please email publicengagement@sfmoma.org, and we will do our best to fulfill your request.