The Storefront for Ideas, located at 127 Walker Street, is a space for inquiry, curiosity, and creativity. It is a space to explore community issues that matter and to co-reimagine the possibilities for Chinatown, now and into the future.
Events in the past few years such as shutdowns due to COVID-19, lack of governmental aid to small businesses, declining customer base, and anti-Asian hate contributed to challenges facing Manhattan Chinatown. As a result, many local businesses have closed, leaving behind empty storefronts.
Vacant since 2021, ISS had the privilege of gaining access to one of these empty storefronts at 127 Walker Street, in the historic core of Manhattan’s Chinatown. We view this access as both a responsibility and an opportunity to restore agency to community members by holding space for collective learning, shared inquiry, and lived perspectives, while supporting creative, community-rooted ways of knowing and practice that reimagine how the issues shaping life in Manhattan Chinatown are explored, understood, and communicated.
In the Storefront Now
2025 Shared Dialogue, Shared Space (SDSS)
Shared Dialogue, Shared Space (SDSS), organized by Korea Art Forum, is an ongoing series of outdoor participatory art events held at accessible community hubs in immigrant neighborhoods around New York City. SDSS offers residents and visitors the unique opportunity to engage directly with artists and work with them to develop projects that address issues of language, identity, migration, conflict, and cultural production – key issues that define the experience of New Yorkers.
2025 Artists:
Moses Ros, Nature’s Echo II
Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana, The U.S. Childhood Arrivals Mural Project
Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga, MIGRANTOPOLY
Ali Motamedi, Where We Land
Cecilia Lim, Remember Your Connection: Mending & Repair
Guest Curators: Jennifer McGregor and Martin Lucas
Following the unveiling of their public art installations across New York City, these artists present an indoor exhibition, extending their outdoor public art installations realized at multiple sites across New York City into a shared reflective experience at the Storefront for Ideas.
Past Exhibitions
2025-26
November-December 2025
Still Life: Drawings by Paul Leung features over 70 drawings by Paul Leung, a retired civil engineer who unexpectedly lost his wife during the COVID-19 pandemic. His daughter took him to a senior center where a retired art professor helped restart his love of drawing, introducing him to different techniques. Through weekly and often daily practice, drawing became a steady, restorative way for Paul to process grief, loss, and isolation.
Curated by Paul’s nephew Ken Leung, whose family has lived in Chinatown for multiple generations, these drawings are presented to honor Paul’s resilience and the community he represents in this precarious time.
August 2025
2025 Theme: Abuse of Power by Politicians that Fuels Hate: Dictate Your Fate, No Fear, No Hate
This exhibition marks the culmination of a citywide youth art contest focused on hate crimes prevention and related issues such as bias, discrimination, community safety, and belonging. For nearly two decades, OCA-NY, in collaboration with local youth organizations, has led the annual Hate Crimes Prevention Project (HCPP), selecting a cohort of high school students each summer to meet weekly and learn about hate crimes, civil rights, and cross-cultural solidarity.
The culminating public exhibition of the annual citywide youth art contest focused on hate crimes prevention. Through OCA-NY’s annual Hate Crimes Prevention Project (HCPP), a cohort of high school students meet weekly each summer to learn about hate crimes prevention and collaboratively plan and organize the citywide Hate Crimes Prevention Youth Art Contest and the culminating Hate Crimes Prevention Exhibit, during which all the art submissions are displayed and the winners are announced.
June 2025
A presentation of artwork and projects from our afterschool program students–reflecting their curiosity, creativity, and imagination across different disciplines from science to writing, from math to art and beyond.
December 2024 – May 2025
This exhibition brought together historic artifacts and everyday ephemera to examine how housing insecurity and the decline of affordable homeownership have reshaped Manhattan’s Chinatown. Through objects that evoke the textures of everyday life in past decades of Chinatown, including the phoenix and dragon commissioned for Jing Fong Restaurant when it opened at 20 Elizabeth Street 40 years ago; traditional Chinese furniture from century-old associations; and a newspaper archive chronicling crimes in Chinatown maintained by Shuck Seid from the 1960s until his death in 2020 at age 96, the exhibition invites visitors to consider how the housing conditions, ownership disparities, and the lack of affordable housing have put the community at growing risk of instability and long-term viability.
Curators: Jacky Wong, Derong (Rosie) Li, Jack Hsia | Chinatown Community Land Trust