'Mimi Chen Ting' Retrospective Debuts at BYU Museum of Art
PROVO, UT – A new exhibition celebrating the work of Chinese American artist Mimi Chen Ting opens at the BYU Museum of Art today. Mimi Chen Ting: Make Movement Visible, showcases more than 50 paintings, prints, and performances by the titular artist, whose featured works span six decades. Known for her vibrant colors and techniques that gave paintings a dance-like quality, Ting explored movement in all forms through vivid color on canvas, paper, and the stage. As always at the MOA, the exhibition is free and open to all.
“We’re so thrilled to introduce new audiences to the art of Mimi Chen Ting,” said Miri Kim, who curated the exhibition. “We’re incredibly grateful to Andrew, Cheryl, and Clarence Ting for making available previously unpublished images, footage, and other materials from their family holdings for the exhibition.”
Ting (1946-2022) was born in Shanghai, grew up in Hong Kong, and moved to San Francisco in 1965. Her work, which spans abstraction to representation, takes inspiration from a number of different artforms, from music to dance, and draws on themes of family, migration, and diaspora. From the graceful flow of a dancer to the careful motion of an artist’s hand, Ting was fascinated with movement and captured it with dynamism and vibrance, imbuing flat canvas with the energy of four dimensions.
“My impression as I walked into this exhibition – I was in awe,” said Andrew Ting, the husband of the artist. “Her life wasn’t always cheerful, but her work essentially is. What she’s really trying to show is the joyous part of being a human being.”
Ting was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and died in 2022. The exhibition, created in collaboration with The Ting Family Living Trust and Artist Estate Studio, aims to honor this illustrious artist’s lifetime of work, and includes her last completed painting, Last Songs, which is being publicly exhibited for the first time. The exhibition is accompanied by a new catalogue of many of Ting’s most iconic works, which is available for purchase at the MOA Store.
Mimi Chen Ting will be open until October 10, 2026.The MOA has added one work, Stepping Out on Blue (2020), to its permanent collection. Details of the exhibition and a preview of several featured artworks are available at https://moa.byu.edu/mimi-chen-ting.
