CHINATOWN — Stories and memories shared through everyday and personal items are at the heart of two new exhibitions currently on view at the Museum of Chinese in America.
“Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving,” documents the museum’s efforts to collect and preserve the contemporary history of Chinatown and the Chinese American experience.
More than 200 objects from the museum’s collection are on display, including photographs, an old phone booth topped with a green pagoda, and personal items like clothing and letters. Oral histories from the institution's archives will also play through speakers in the gallery.
Questions displayed throughout the exhibit — like “What does it mean to be Chinese?” and “How do you become an American?” — are designed to encourage visitors to make connections between items that can seem commonplace at first glance, as well as explore issues like identity, said Herb Hoi Chun Tam, the museum’s curator and director of exhibitions.
“These things that we may think are just personal [items] can actually resonate later on in a museum like this to actually help us unpack other stuff,” he said.
Personal objects also play a role in the museum’s other fall exhibition, “Memory Prints: The Story World of Phillip Chen.”
Images of his children’s toys, collected objects and mathematical symbols are combined to create abstract prints that convey the Iowa-based visual artist's experiences and his family’s history in America, which spans several generations.
Additionally, another exhibition detailing the Chinese American experience opens fartehr uptown this week at the New York-Historical Society.
“Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving” and “Memory Prints: The Story World of Phillip Chen” are on view until March 1, 2015 at the Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St.. For more information and related events, visit the museum’s website.
