Foong Ping’s life began with no art at all. Her family was part of the large Chinese minority in Malaysia, where riots broke out as a result of racial tensions the year she was born, 1969. When her parents sent her abroad to college, they expected she would pursue business, law, maybe engineering. She agreed, until one day she walked into the wrong building and sat down.
The lights went out. Two slides of art came up. “I was like, What?” She was curious, so she stayed. This was room 101, Brown University, 1989, but it wasn’t the engineering building. The slides at the front of the classroom showed figurines from fourth-century China and fourth-century Europe. As the professor described them, they changed Foong’s life.
“I never understood how an image has to be read,” Foong said. “That was it. I was sold. It was a love story”…
