Seattle Asian Museum

M. Herrera make-up assignment

During the holiday break I had the fortunate pleasure to visit The Seattle Asian Museum. As we were visiting relatives in the Northwest, I talked to my uncle regarding this seminar class I was taking through USC, and he suggested we go to the SAM (Seattle Asian Museum) and with the snow storms already passed we had time to look around Seattle....

The Wing Like Asian Museum-
The old museum that used to be housed in an old garage was moved after 42 years around the corner of its original spot. It has become an anchor for revitalizing Seattle's Chinatown district. And it is pretty magnificent. The Wing Lulke Asian Museum is billed as "the only pan-Asian Pacific American museum in the US. It is named after Wing Luke, a Seattle councilman who died in a plane crsh in 1965 and is celebrated in Seattle as the first Asian American offical elected to public office in the Northwest, but like other identity museums, it is partly meant to be a commun ity institution, offering a cultural home for local Asian Americans, paying homage to their accomplishments and recounting how they overcame the many obstacles once thrown in their way.
The museum proudly displays its community's mainstream accomplishments, For example the fountains and outside sculptures are by local George Tsutakawa. The museum also chronicles the trials and hardships of early immigrants with some of the simplist objects shaving brush, a suitcase, iron, waiter's uniform. The museum donors are honored in clever art instillations, theri names inscribed on large hand-held fans in the lobby or on the rims of stacked rice bowls decoritively displayed or illuminated on the museum steps that led to the second floor.
One of the museum's most remarkable artifacts is a 15x30 foot thaetrical curtain on which is painted an array of advertisements for local Japanese businesses. The curtain was mounted almost a centiry ago in a nearby Japanese theater, Nippon Kan. The fixtures from a local Chinese store that oponed in 1910, the Yick Fung Compnay, are also in the museuam which is pretty cool.
And then ther are the traumas and trials and memories, portrayed in an exhibition, "homoring our Journey", A drawing from Harper's Magazine shows the 1886 anti-Chinese riots in Seattle, in which white citizens rounded up Chinese residents, many of whom had come to work on railway lines, and forced them onto boats heading home-pretty powerful!
The museum is more than just a museum, it is a community cultural center. It offers a small theater for multi-media events, a library and a community hall with a catering kitchen. Even all the exhibits are community based. In the coming months there will be displays about Filipino, Vietnamese and Cambodian cultures. The changing exhibitions will explore other Asian identities, like those associated with sexual preferences or mixed backgrounds. And a large space on the main floor will host a series of Hawaiin immigration, Asian stereotypes, and the refugee experience. It is pretty remarkable museaum about the Asian_american experience.
M. Herrera