The Signification Cultural Themes Of The Chinese-American Museum

Museums serve as a way to connect with the public on a large scale, and the knowledge held within exhibits can be a fruitful experience for those who choose to visit these institutions. Experiencing all that a museum has to offer, no matter how well intentioned, can at times be confusing and overwhelming to the individuals visiting the site. The Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian dedicates itself to Native Americans in North and South America, and worked tirelessly with varying tribes to create a new standard. Some visitors and scholars found their work to be successful in design and approach while others found it to be lacking in execution. This institution does not approach Native American history in a familiar fashion; however it does cover an expansive period of time, and produces a great amount of detail while generating powerful emotions.

Every time I come home from college, my family and I would go out to yumcha or, as directly translated from Cantonese, to “drink tea. However, drinking tea is only one component of yumcha. To yumcha is to converse with company over a meal of many small dishes and hot tea. Going yumcha is social activity brought to the United States by the people from the Guangdong region of China, also known as Cantonese people. When they immigrated to the United States, yumcha became an important tradition because it also enabled Cantonese parents to socialize their children into the Chinese culture through the language and social practices involved in the meal and the ritual and meaning surrounding the tea. However, to Chinese-Americans such as myself, going yumcha with native Chinese people also emphasized my American identity due to my food choices. Yet when I go yumcha with non-Chinese people, I become distinctly aware of my Chinese identity when they fail the language or rituals of this tradition. The only time when I do not feel alienated during yumcha is when I go with my other

Over the weekend, I took the time to explore two museums. The first museum I visited was the D.I.A , also known as the Detroit Institute of Arts. The D.I.A was a very beautiful, multicultural, and unique place. I also took the time to visit and explore the Charles H. Wright Museum of Detroit. Luckily, these museums weren’t too far from each other they were roughly 5-7 minutes apart. The Charles H. Wright Museum was also very beautiful, it was more appealing to me because it is a museum that exhibits and highlights the history of the African American culture. The Charles H. Wright museum also happens to be the largest African American museum in the world.

The museum represents the distinct way in which many of these artist were uplifted due to the ideas set forth by Ortiz. He was able to set out to gather a community in which people would feel proud and inspired by their cultural background. The main purpose of the museum was to promote a sense of identity and give the Latino community a way to promote their culture. The museum would eventually bring together the community and inform others of their prominent role in society. Also, it would help empower the Latino community, as the museum would voice their opinions through the artworks shown. El Museo is a representation of the cultural history and the way that people were able to establish a foundation of cultural unity. The positive impact that the museum had on the community was forced upon the people as they realized how important the culture was, as the community began to crumble. El Museo served as a way to preserve the culture and enforce the voices of the Latinos for future generations. (Hackshaw,

I hope to see museums make more concerted efforts to educate the public. Too many exhibits are of the “passive, didactic looking” than like the engaging Object Stories program (Dartt, Murawski). Exhibits should seek to tell untold narratives, and programs should be places of communication and cross-cultural encounters. For too long, difficult confrontations have been avoided, both inside the museum, and by dominant communities

'American Born Chinese' by Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novel broken up into three individual stories but all tie together at the end. It discusses race, puberty, friendship and tradition all while exploring the identity of growing up a minority. Through the struggles portrayed in beautiful images that, while detailed, maintain their simplicity. This book reminded me of ‘Scott Pligrim Versus the World’ by Brian Lee O’Malley with it’s art style and pacing.

For this museum paper, I went to the Heritage of the Americas Museum at Cuyamaca College. The Heritage of the Americas Museum is a cultural and educational facility featuring the prehistoric and historic art, culture and natural history of the Americas; North, South and Central America. Even though this museum is specializes in housing early inhabitants of the Americas art and artifacts, they do posses some non-western pieces, specifically Chinese, which coincidentally became my favorite item out of all the exhibits and is what I chose to do my research on for this paper. But before I getting into one specific piece out of literally hundreds, I want to rewind back and discuss the Museum’s as a whole, and why I chose this one in particular instead

The museum is in a mansion and has been since 1971. The museum use to have meeting and get-togethers. Federico Garcia Lorca, Maria Guerrero, Vicente Blasco Ibanez, Rene Dumesnil, and Eduardo Zamacois went to these. They are all famous artists.

In the Robyn Autry article, it mainly focuses on the national conflict of museums mainly focusing towards African American. The author travel to 15 museums around the United States that focuses towards African American. She mainly talks about how the African American were facing numerous hardships in the U.S and how the museum represents those issues to the general public. She believes the way to tell the hardship of African Americans is by exhibiting through a museum. When traveling through these museums she focused towards “centered on three traumatic episodes: capture and displacement from Africa, enslavement, and racial segregation” (Autry 64). The author of the articles wants to show that over time that museums meanings has changed over

Los Angeles is a beautiful city filled with many classy shops, modern houses and many diverse restaurants base from China, Korea, America as well as many other different countries. However, there is a museum that located right in the heart of Los Angeles where 6th street and Wilshire Boulevard parallel with each other. This is a very interesting place with many tourists and people visiting each day. The museum is a familiar attraction for many LA locals, and it is also the largest art museum in the Western United States named Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the finest Asian art collections that has enlightened and strengthened my understanding in my personal art experience. The Museum itself is an artistic architectural structure that graces the entire block on 82nd Street in Manhattan. Entering inside, I sensed myself going back into an era, into a past where people traded ideas and learned from each other. It is a past, where I still find their works of yesteryears vividly within my grasp, to be remembered and shared as if their reflections of works were cast for the modern devoted learner.

Here we mainly talk about three buildings. The first building of the Art Center was built in 1943 and actually was the first museum built in the United States and is a distinctly modern building. Its name is Saarinen Building. It’s an S shaped building located on the crest of a small hill. The S shape creates a battery of wings connected to Saarinen’s building from east to west side, include different aspects of the center such as the auditorium and the classrooms. The building has a flat roof which constructed of reinforced concrete and clad in Lannon stone from Wisconsin. There’s an ongoing program called Smart Sunday which is for families. The purpose is to engage in a variety of community’s children and their families and it’s responding to either a permanent collection object or temporary exhibition such as tony feher. The second building is I.M.PEI building built in 1968 which is the Chinese-American architect designed. It slopes down at the south side of the Saarinen’s open courtyard. It’s made of two materials class in concrete primarily. I.M.PEI took the same concrete and bush hammered stone from Saarinen building. But after 25 years later from 1943, there was a need to expand and large-scale works. So actually this building is totally different than the Saarinen building, it’s massive, open, and heavy. And Jackson Pollock painting which painted in 1943 is an example of why this was needed

The Museum of Chinese in America is located in the lower part of Manhattan and is on the edge of Soho and Chinatown. It was founded in 1980, was dedicated in preserving and presenting the history, heritage and presenting the history, heritage, culture and diverse experiences of people of Chinese descent in the United States. The museum brings 160 years of Chinese history through videos, pictures, and artifacts. The museum also has a broad array of different activities for all ages, and all visitors. The goals of this museum is to make the history of Chinese American more accessible to the public, and to informs, educates, and engages visitors about Chinese American history that is in the making. The museum

I had an opportunity to visit the oriental institute museum . During my visit to the museum I was made aware of its location and the importance of it to chicago. The museum housed many exhibits of historical value dating civilization back to the paleolithic period of 2,500,000-100,000 B.C. Below you'll find examples of mans rise through the use of tools and refined skills from cave living to structured living throughout evolution. This is an experience that has grounded me to a new interest in structures that we have devised to become the homes we use today for the rest of my life.

Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.