Pacific Asia Museum

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

One of my generous classmates told me to look up this site, and it is definitely a find. Just google "Pacific Asia Museum" and the first prompt will take you to this wornderful site. I was not only able to find information (and pictures, and virtual tours!) on a variety of Asian cultures, but also links to things such as the "Art of Buddhism" (symbols and signs), "Chinese Ceramics," and "Power dressing in Imperial China." The one I am most excited about is an exhibit which will begin in February called "The Samurai Re-imagined: From Ukiuo-e to Anime." My 10th graders will FLIP OUT to be able to see and experience this material first hand. One of my first orders of business when we get back from break will be to schedule a field trip. I believe the museum is in Pasadena, but I also remember that my classmate said it is very small and they only take a limited amount of visitors at a time...perfect for me and my students.

Anyhoo...browsing through the site is very easy. We can browse through the collections, and there are a variety of links for teacher resources, instructional materials, and even key terms and objectives as well, which I find helpful. When I looked at the Buddhist objects, the teacher resource link even gave the Standards for 6th grade students...not my grade, but good that there is content that we can use to base our instruction upon.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and while I certainly plan to take physically take my 10th graders, I will incorporate the website into my 12th grade English/World Lit class. They can take virtual tours of the musem so that when I am explaining Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, they can have a better understanding of the culture. This may also aide them in the construction of their poetry (haiku and tanka) in relation to the customs, dress, symbols, etc. of their own indigenous culture.

[Anonymous]

Hi I am glad you find the Pacific Asia Museum helpful. I must catch up with you on the coming Tuesday (please forgive me if I can't bring up your name; my name is Minhua and I teach in Pasadena).

Just a note for you all: if you do plan to visit Pacific Asia Museum with your students, the Museum is free for a group of 12 students or more. And the museum provide arts workshop for students so that the students have an opportunity to work with artists on Asian arts projects.

[clay dube]

Minhua and Christina are right about this treasure in our midst. The museum also has "family fun" Saturdays about once a month. Those usually feature performances and craft experiences for kids. It's a private museum and survives on grants, memberships, and donations. It's relatively small and the displays are much improved in terms of layout, labelling, and coherence.

The history of the museum is interesting as well. Perhaps someone can learn a bit and tell us more in the museum thread of the Asia in My Classroom forum. It's at:
http://uschinaforum.usc.edu/showpost.aspx?PostID=1754&PageIndex=6

Please be sure to do as you have here and put the name of the museum in the subject line.

I think it's great that Christina and Minhua have found this underappreciated website and museum! For S/SE Asia, Pasadena has another great museum, the Norton Simon (which is better known for its Van Goghs and other works).

Please be sure to check the exhibitions section of our web calendar:
http://www.china.usc.edu/calendar.aspx
for information about current, upcoming, and past exhibitions (what possible use could such info about past exhibitions be I ask). Of course, our Talking Points and Teaching about Asia newsletters also highlight such exhibitions.

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