Dr. Patricia Lee Daigle, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, will undertake research in preparation for Deep Down: Contemporary Asian American Art in the South, the first museum exhibition and catalogue to broadly explore the unstudied and underrepresented diversity of Asian artists in the American South. To ensure multivocality in the early stages of development of Deep Down, Dr. Daigle will host a convening that brings together exhibition co-curators, Jen Sudul Edwards of The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and independent curator MyLoan Dinh, along with curators, artists, and scholars from a variety of fields surrounding the topic. The convening will provide an opportunity to discuss the various throughlines of the exhibition from diverse perspectives, which will guide subsequent project research and planning. Dr. Daigle will travel to locations throughout the American South to visit artist’s studios, archives, and museums to conduct research and view artworks for possible inclusion in Deep Down. While focused on contemporary artists, this project will emphasize the centuries-long, yet often unrecognized, presence of Asians in the South. In a region that has long been defined by stereotypes and a dominant Black and white racial binary, this project aims to disrupt the Eurocentric bias of art history to better represent the nuanced and dynamic cultural fabric of our nation.