{"id":4398,"date":"2009-07-08T19:07:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T19:07:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-07-08T20:07:27","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T20:07:27","slug":"Museum-of-Chinese-in-America-gets-new-home-and-new-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=4398","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Chinese in America gets new home and new director"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nA converted industrial machine repair shop at 211-215 Centre Street, designed by Maya Lin<\/strong>, who also designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington will officially open in late September.<\/p>\n

In the lobby Ms. Lin<\/strong> has created an art installation called \u201cThe Journey Wall,\u201d which consists of bronze tiles that link Chinese-American families\u2019 <\/strong>names and places of origin in China with the towns or cities where they settled in America. <\/p>\n

Ms. Alice Mong,<\/strong> is the new director and comes from Committee 100, a Chinese-American leadership group whose founders include I. M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma. Read our interview with Alice here<\/a>.
\nRead entire article from the NYTimes<\/a> below:\n<\/p>\n

\nThe newly expanded, newly relocated Museum of Chinese in America has chosen to open the doors of its new home on the edge of Chinatown quietly and gradually as it settles in over the summer. But it aims to make a big statement once it\u2019s fully moved in about the role that Chinese immigrants and their descendants have played in constructing American society.<\/p>\n

That building, a converted industrial machine repair shop at 211-215 Centre Street, was designed by Maya Lin, who also designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington and is a member of the museum\u2019s board. With about 12,000 square feet spread over two floors, the Centre Street building is nearly six times larger than the museum\u2019s current home, and cost $8.1 million to revamp. In the lobby Ms. Lin has created an art installation called \u201cThe Journey Wall,\u201d which consists of bronze tiles that link Chinese-American families\u2019 names and places of origin in China with the towns or cities where they settled in America.<\/p>\n

She has created two entrances for the building, which are meant to symbolize the museum\u2019s twin missions: helping Americans to understand the Chinese world better, and vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes Chinese history is seen as unchanging, and put into a lacquered box,\u201d said Cynthia Lee, the museum\u2019s chief curator. \u201cThere is also a notion that Chinese isolate themselves into that box and don\u2019t want to interact with the rest of society. We want to get away from that and show our history as a living, dynamic thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Museum of Chinese in America began nearly 30 years ago as the Chinatown History Project, and has amassed a large collection of documents and objects that register the history and culture of Chinese immigrants in America. But before the move to the new site the museum was confined to 2,000 square feet on the second floor of a building at 70 Mulberry Street, in the heart of Chinatown, that it shared with numerous other community groups.<\/p>\n

The Centre Street location opened without fanfare late last month, and many of the artifacts collected over the years are still in transit from one building to the other. On Sept. 22 the museum is scheduled to hold a grand opening ceremony at the new building, when its permanent \u201ccore collection\u201d will be unveiled, along with an exhibition of art combining the work of Chinese-American artists and Chinese artists living in the United States.<\/p>\n

Ms. Mong, who formally assumes her new duties next week, comes to the museum from the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American leadership group whose founders include I. M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma. Born in Taiwan and raised in Virginia and Ohio, she said she envisioned the expanded version of the museum as a place that would attract not just Chinatown residents and non-Chinese New Yorkers but also \u201ctourists from Tennessee and Qingdao.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sam Quan Krueger, the museum\u2019s chief operating officer, said: \u201cThe Committee of 100 is known as a network of prominent Chinese-Americans, the movers and shakers. So Alice\u2019s coming here is a boon to our ability to raise individual capital while tapping into the vibrancy of the Chinese-American community.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this initial phase, with most exhibits still being installed, the museum is open only on Thursdays, with no admission charged. After the formal inauguration ceremonies it will be open Thursday through Monday, with an admission charge of $7 for adults and $4 for students and those 65 and over.<\/p>\n

The new museum\u2019s first public offering is the Chinatown Film Project, which began last week and will continue on Thursdays throughout the summer. Ten directors based in New York City, some of them of Chinese descent but most not, were commissioned to make short films, less than 10 minutes long, focusing on some aspect of daily life in Chinatown.<\/p>\n

The results include impressionistic, plotless efforts like Wayne Wang and Richard Wong\u2019s \u201cTuesday\u201d and Jem Cohen\u2019s \u201cNew York Night Scene\u201d as well as story-driven shorts like Rose Troche\u2019s \u201cSunday at 6\u201d and Cary Fukunaga\u2019s \u201cKiwi Lotion.\u201d Once the museum has opened fully, the films will be shown in rotation throughout the day until year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Karin Chien, the film project\u2019s producer and curator, said she hoped the new, larger museum and the chance it offers to showcase Chinese-American or Asian-American films and performers, from spoken word artists to musicians, would \u201cfacilitate a huge renaissance for Chinatown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the same way that the museum is expanding physically,\u201d she added, \u201cit wants to expand the scope of the media and artists it works with and the audience it attracts, and this seemed a good way to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two other events scheduled for this month also exemplify that approach. On Saturday the museum will be the host of Asian-American ComiCon, an event devoted to the role of Asians and Asian-Americans in comics and graphic fiction, and on July 24 through July 26, part of the 32nd annual Asian American International Film Festival, for years a staple event at the Asia Society, will be held there.<\/p>\n

One section of the museum\u2019s permanent exhibition that is already up and running, a multi-media presentation called \u201ccore portraits,\u201d focuses on Chinese-Americans who in one way or another \u201cexemplify a particular historical period.\u201d The 10 subjects include a celebrity, the silent film era actress Anna May Wong, but the display also incorporates a restaurateur, a laundryman and the first Chinese graduate of an American university, Yung Wing, who studied at Yale in the mid-19th century.<\/p>\n

Each of the video portraits runs three to five minutes and is accompanied by a scripted first-person monologue, delivered in English, that is based on statements made by the subject. Those texts have been written by some of the country\u2019s most prominent Chinese-American literary figures, including David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen and Ha Jin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this museum can be a way for us to celebrate and investigate the role that Chinese people have played in building this country,\u201d said Mr. Hwang, a playwright whose work includes \u201cM. Butterfly\u201d and \u201cFOB.\u201d \u201cIt is important to have an institution that can make the statement that we have always been a critical part of American history and at the same time ask what it really means to be a Chinese-American.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until Sept. 22 the Museum of Chinese in America is open on Thursdays, at 211-215 Centre Street, between Howard and Grand Streets, Lower Manhattan, (212) 619-4785, mocanyc.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Above picture: Cynthia Lee, left, chief curator of the museum; Sam Quan Krueger, chief operating officer; and S. Alice Mong, director.<\/i><\/p>\n

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