The Leyburn Edition of LONG TIME NO SEE
The Leyburn Edition of LONG TIME NO SEE
On View: Through December 15, 2025
Location: Leyburn Library Gallery
Image (left): Dad’s Favorite, Mondays, 2023, Stephanie Shih (American, b. 1986), archival pigment print on bamboo paper, 30 x 40 in. W&L Art Museum purchase. Image © Stephanie Shih
What histories do foods and ceramics carry?
This installation features four life-size still life photographs drawn from Stephanie Shih’s series, LONG TIME NO SEE, inspired by her Taiwanese-Chinese American heritage and rooted in the visual language of European still life painting.
In these compositions, Shih pairs familiar foods, including hot dogs and corn soup, with ceramics, childhood stories, and Asian diasporic histories to trace surprising culinary lineages that reflect global trade and the rich cultural narratives found in the W&L Art Museum and Galleries’ nationally renowned collection of Chinese porcelain. By altering her still life photographs and removing the ceramics, Shih creates a deliberate absence that reveals how objects gain new meanings as they move across time, geographies, and uses. Shih reminds us that context, not just origin, shapes what we see and the stories they evoke.
This exhibition is conceptualized by students in ARTH 398: Seminar in Museum Studies: Avery Dennard ‘27, Nora Kuhn ’26, Brendan Thorpe ‘27, and Zhihuan Yan ’25, and curated by museum assistant Hailey Neaman ’25.
Is there a more quintessentially American meal than a loaded hot dog? In Dad’s Favorite, Mondays, Stephanie Shih unravels this food myth, exposing its global roots and resonance within her own family. The small lidded mustard pot at the center of this scene, with its intended contents and form, represents a historical blending of east and west. Mustard and ketchup, popular in Europe by the eighteenth century, were both derived from southeast Asian condiments whose origins date back thousands of years. This pot itself, while made in China, is modeled after a European form and was undoubtedly made to order by a western buyer who desired luxurious porcelain for their table. From this peak of hybridized ceramic finery, Shih transports the viewer to a family shopping trip to Costco, where her father delighted in their $1.50 hot dog combo. A meal and a man, brought together in America from beginnings across the globe. Both immigrants, perhaps both then are also quintessentially American.
