What is a garden? A wild space? A curated collection of plants? Or a plot of soil in which to seed memory, connection, and creativity? This summer, the Gardner Museum’s Hostetter Gallery springs to life with the large-scale sculptures of Ming Fay (1943 – 2025), whose work reconsiders gardens as sites of creative potential that reflect the lives and desires of those who cultivate them.
At once playful and contemplative, Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden constructs a space of wonder that calls on visitors to view the world around them with new appreciation. Sculptures of fruits, seeds, shells, as well as hybrid plants borne of his boundless imagination, surprise in their unexpected pairings and sizes. Together, they conjure new meanings through familiar shapes, scents, and symbols. In his papier-mâché, bronze and ceramic gardens, Fay unites personal, collective, and cultural memories, building gardens as fantastical spaces born of curiosity, longing, and his own lived experiences as part of the Chinese diaspora in the United States.
On view from June 26 – September 21, 2025, Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden invites visitors to escape the city for a brief moment and marvel at the extraordinary, ordinary beauty of a maple tree twirler, a ripe cherry, or a crooked wishbone—and how they can unlock memory and imagination.
Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures, a partner exhibition at Pao Arts Center will explore the city of Boston’s Chinatown gardens through the art of Ming Fay, Mel Taing, and Yu-Wen Wu from July 18 – October 10, 2025.
Image Credit: Ming Fay (American, 1943 – 2025), Cayenne Pepper, 1990s. Mixed Media, 22.9 x 69.9 x 33 cm (9 x 27 1/2 x 13 in.) Private Collection
About the Artist
Ming Fay 費明杰 (1943 – 2025)
Ming Fay was a New York City-based artist known for his installations of immersive sculptural gardens and public art. Working primarily in papier-mâché over a wire armature, Fay drew from his life-long engagement with Chinese and American horticulture and mythologies to create sculptures of large-scale botanical forms and invented imaginary species. He focused on the concept of the garden as a symbol of abundance or a utopia—a metaphorical location for humankind's desirable state of being.
Born in Shanghai to two artists and raised in Hong Kong, Fay moved to the United States in 1961 to attend the Columbus College of Art and Design. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Fay taught sculpture at universities, including William Paterson University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work is held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, M+, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art, among others. Important exhibitions and installations have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Exit Art, Grounds for Sculpture, Art Basel, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.
Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden is supported in part by Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Amy and David Abrams, the Barr Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, Wagner Foundation, the Barbara Lee Program Fund, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fredericka and Howard Stevenson, and Yuchun and Agustina Lee.
The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
