Martin Wong had a thing for firemen. ❤️‍🔥 In Big Heat, he painted a fantasy of his crushes against the backdrop of a burned-out brick tenement, familiar to his fellow Lower East Side inhabitants. Wong moved to this NYC neighborhood, also known as Loisada to its Latinx, primarily Puerto Rican, residents, in 1981. His work chronicled, and paid tribute to, the place and its people, marrying hope and love with the brute realities of those living on the margins. Big Heat is Wong’s utopian vision of hope, love, and redemption within the crumbling environs of what was once one of New York’s poorest neighborhoods. Wong's painting is on view now in Shifting Landscapes. — #MartinWong, Big Heat, 1986–88. Acrylic on linen, 60 1/8 × 48 1/8 in. (152.7 × 122.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee 99.89. Courtesy of The Estate of Martin Wong and P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York, NY