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 COVER STORY

May 2008

By Trevor GRIFFEY

© Copyright 2008 ColorsNW Magazine

Pan-Asian Perspectives

New Wing Luke Museum brings the people together

When Beth Takekawa, the executive director for the Wing Luke Asian Museum, came to Seattle in 1989, she noticed there was something different about the city’s Asian-American community. She had lived in Chicago and New York, where “it had never even been an option to do pan-Asian work. The communities didn’t live together, and there’s a lot of politics involved.”

But in Seattle, pan-Asian community collaborations are much more common. “A lot of Asian Americans remark on that, too,” says Takekawa. “I guess because of its unique history, especially in this neighborhood (the International District).”

At the south end of downtown Seattle, the Chinatown/ International District (ID) includes a historic Chinatown, Japantown, little Manila and a Little Saigon rather than a series of separate ethnic neighborhoods. Distinct communities of Asian immigrants have interacted in complex ways here throughout the 20th century.

More importantly, a 1970s pan-Asian, student-led movement to preserve the International District specifically as an Asian-American neighborhood transformed Seattle permanently. The political, cultural and economic institutions that the movement created saved the neighborhood from the wrecking ball without catering to tourists. Instead, it developed affordable housing, culturally appropriate social services for seniors and immigrants, and used restrictive zoning to protect small businesses. In the process, it brought people from different Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups together in ways that continue to make Seattle distinct from other cities around the country.

The Wing Luke Asian Museum is one of the important institutions that grew out of Seattle’s Asian-American movement of the 1960s and 1970s. When it celebrates its grand re-opening the weekend of May 31 – marking a move from a 10,000-square-foot renovated garage to a 60,000-square-foot former hotel – it will honor Seattle’s unique heritage of Asian-American community building and offer ambitious new possibilities for its development into the future.

THE MUSEUM’S ROOTS

While the Wing Luke Asian Museum is unique for being a pan-Asian museum, what brought it national recognition and made its growth possible over the past two decades is its unusual commitment to community-generated exhibits and programming. It’s a process that owes a great deal to the visionary yet humble leadership of its former executive director, Ron Chew, who himself had been involved in the International District preservation movement in the 1970s.

The museum was founded in 1966 as the Wing Luke Memorial Museum in honor of Seattle’s Wing Luke, a civil-rights advocate whose election to the City Council in 1962 made him the first Chinese-American elected official in the Pacific Northwest, but whose life was tragically cut short at 40 when he died three years later in a plane crash.

For its first two decades, the museum remained small and hewed to traditional curatorial practices of putting historical artifacts on display and explaining their significance.

But when Chew was hired as the museum’s executive director in 1991, he brought a different vision honed by his own experiences.

When Chew was growing up, his father waited tables in the neighborhood’s Hong Kong Restaurant, his mother sewed gloves for the nearby Seattle Glove Company and Chew himself worked at the Hong Kong to earn money for school. After graduating from college in 1975, he began writing for and later served as editor of the International District’s International Examiner – a pan-Asian, neighborhood newspaper that Filipino-American activists had bought for $1 from local businessmen in the mid-1970s.

Chew found himself inspired by activists’ campaigns to save the International District from redevelopment in the wake of the nearby Kingdome’s construction. “Would this neighborhood, a cradle of Asian-American history, a place I considered home, survive?” Chew recalled thinking in reminiscences he later wrote for the paper. “From 1975 until 1988, I centered myself… in the world of community journalism… I worked with – and learned alongside – dozens of other wide-eyed student activists who, like me, were rediscovering their heritage and their community.” In the process, he transformed the International Examiner into a mouthpiece for neighborhood preservation politics and local Asian-American culture.

Working there might have been nontraditional for a museum director, but it gave Chew great appreciation for and awareness of the community the museum represents. In an interview with the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, Chew later recalled that when he first arrived at the museum, “it was more about objects, more about Asian things, and not so much about Asian-American history, culture and art.” He told the Community Arts Network that while he was the museum’s third director, “the previous two directors were white and from outside the community. The previous focus of the museum was on educating the general public.”

He immediately set to work to change that. “I didn’t want a museum that was a static, dead place that was about the past. I wanted a museum that would be engaged with the community, dealing with its needs and concerns. And the museum was small enough to provide me that option to promote that vision.”

Michelle Kumata, now the museum’s exhibits manager, remembers the day in 1991 when Chew asked her and five other Japanese Americans from Seattle to develop an exhibit on the history of Japanese internment during World War II. “None of us had any experience. We said, ‘Why do you want us to do this?’ ”

As people who still lived with the political and social effects of their parents’ and grandparents’ internment, Chew reassured Kumata and the others, they had life experience and the resultant expertise that were much more important than technical skills in museum design. “He said, ‘It’s so easy. You just take some pictures and put them on the wall and you have an exhibit.’ ”

Kumata laughs. “It was a kind of ‘ignorance is bliss’ thing. So we recruited a lot of Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans) to give their input on this exhibit and help develop its content and design. We had over 100 people volunteering and helping out,” she says. They gathered more 1,000 artifacts and photographs, many from people’s private collections.

The exhibit they created, “9066: Fifty Years Before and Fifty Years After,” opened on the 50th anniversary of Presidential Executive Order 9066 that had authorized the Japanese-American internment. Community involvement in the exhibit changed the internment’s meaning, as the museum used the anniversary to talk about the long history of Japanese Americans in the community as more than mere victims. The novel approach was a spectacular success, and the tiny institution that at the time had just three staff members and a minimal budget drew more than 50,000 visitors.

“That was the start,” Kumata recalls, of the museum’s “community-based exhibition model, where you bring the community members in to develop the story rather than have a curator or an historian or an academic. Then you get the true story and it’s more authentic because it’s not like you’re filtering it through a book or someone who didn’t live it first-hand.”

It’s a complicated consultative process that involves bringing together a dozen people to brainstorm ideas and work with designers and consultants to bring their vision to fruition. But for Kumata, the benefits of putting on exhibits in this manner well outweigh the costs. “It’s a longer process because you have to do a lot of back and forth, a lot of checking in with people, and they’re not professionals so you have to explain the whole process.” But it develops “a sense of ownership and loyalty and responsibility that in turn helps us develop relationships to all these individuals.”

The Wing Luke museum’s reliance upon “community advisory committees” to guide the creation of its exhibits and its programming has brought national acclaim, inspiring the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. to name it as its first and only affiliate institution in the Pacific Northwest. It has also inspired more young people to get involved with the museum as staff and volunteers, who Chew says “now have that idealism” and help keep it going.

The museum grew along with it, from a budget of $20,000 in the late 1980s to $1.7 million 15 years later, and from a staff of three to a staff of over two dozen. But the culture of the museum remains decidedly non-hierarchical, as the museum’s directors tend to stress teamwork over their own individual accomplishments, and prefer to talk about the community’s accomplishments rather than the museum’s.

Even more importantly, the museum’s transformation has increased its visitors, given Asian-American groups the opportunity to represent themselves, and kept its exhibits relevant to changes in the community it seeks to serve. Recent exhibits, for example, documented the history and culture of the local Sikh community; looked at the experience of Asian children adopted by white American parents; and addressed issues of women and violence in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

EXPANDING THE VISION

As the museum’s innovative new approach resulted in growing attendance, staff and community interest, it quickly outgrew its old facility in the converted garage on Seventh Avenue South. But when it decided to expand to a new building 10 years ago, the biggest challenge wasn’t finding a new space or raising the money to redevelop it. It was figuring out how to do those things while maintaining its commitment to community-centered process.

“How do you build an entire museum with community members?” asks Cassie Chinn, deputy director for the museum. The answer, the museum decided, was to apply its community advisory council process to the museum’s expansion.

First, it brought together a group to decide whether the museum should leave the International District, perhaps moving to areas where many new Asian immigrants live, such as Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood or the Eastside. “The community really affirmed no,” says Chinn, “we need to stay here in the Chinatown/ International District. It’s where our historic roots are; the historic character of the neighborhood really lends to that immersive experience for visitors.”

Next, the museum did an exhaustive inventory of the neighborhood, finally deciding that it would seek to redevelop the East Kong Yick building at 719 South King Street – a 60,000-square-foot hotel built by Chinese immigrants who pooled their money in 1910 and later owned by a family association of descendants. Though it had long served as a home to the region’s migrant and low-income workers, especially Asian immigrants, the building’s upper floors had been vacant since the 1970s because restrictive fire codes made it impossible to rent out the units without expensive reconstruction.

To redevelop and preserve this important part of the neighborhood’s heritage, the museum again created a community advisory council. “We’ve been pretty committed to including community members throughout the process of developing the building as much as we could,” says Chinn, “similar to the process of how we’d built our exhibits hand in hand with community members.”

“We really emphasized engaging the community to determine the program and the use of the building before even the architects came on … And we ended up working with over 60 community members for a period of four months to say, ‘OK, here’s what the program and uses need to be of the museum and here’s how we want them prioritized.’”

The vision that the committee developed will be its most ambitious yet.

While presenting Asian-American history without erasing the distinctive history of the groups that comprise it, the museum will feature exhibits on both at once. One, a permanent exhibit, “Honoring Our Journey,” expands on the museum’s smaller “One Voice, Many Stories” exhibit to describe the region’s pan-Asian history. It will be supplemented by community portrait galleries with rotating exhibits that document the individual histories of the 26 ethnic groups the museum represents.

The museum will include a 1,000-square-foot art gallery to showcase contemporary Asian-American art, with an emphasis on Pacific Northwest artists. Also finding a home there will be Dara Duong’s Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which he operated in White Center until recently.

The new facility won’t just provide displays, but will also give the public more resources with which to research and document their own histories. The museum’s new library and reading room provides access to local Asian-American history and some of the collections that are not on display. An oral history recording lab will allow museum staff and community members to prepare interviews to help develop their exhibits, and eventually provide the public with a means to record their own stories for the museum.

New meeting and community spaces of all shapes and sizes include a 59-seat theater for arts and cultural performances, a multipurpose community hall capable of seating as many as 200 people, two classrooms for school visits, a youth space and small meeting rooms for community use.

And, modeled after the highly acclaimed New York City Tenement Museum, the Wing Luke has preserved 4,500 square feet of the former hotel – everything from a Chinese import-export store to a family association room to some of the small hotel rooms. “Historic immersion tours” will provide visitors the opportunity to learn about the neighborhood’s history by touring these spaces and hearing the stories of individuals who once used them.

The new museum building will, more than the previous one, serve as a gateway to the neighborhood for tourists and locals alike. The owner of the Chinatown Discovery Neighborhood Tours recently donated her business to the museum, whose walking tours it now runs from its new museum space. And, in that same spirit, Takekawa, Wing Luke’s executive director, adds that unlike almost every other museum in the country, “We do not have a café. There are a lot of restaurants, especially small ones, in this area. And we want to draw people and inform them about all the surrounding resources in the area. And vice versa. The restaurant customers could do something other than just come down here and eat.”

The ambitious scope of this new multifaceted museum and community space caused some people to publicly doubt whether the museum could pull off the expansion. An article in the Seattle Weekly a couple years ago titled “A Wing Luke and a Prayer” referred to Chew in diminutive terms as “mild as a bald monk,” described the museum’s hybrid community center/museum approach as symptomatic of “a fascinating identity crisis,” and warned that the museum’s expansion was “a risky capital project” that could end up bankrupting it.

“There were many people who thought we were crazy,” recalls Takekawa about the expansion’s $24 million price tag. “You have some doubts in your mind, but our approach to the campaign was novel. We decided (to) approach our campaign the same way (that it developed exhibits). Basically ask the community to invest in itself.”

Fundraising began with big donors, but, says Takekawa, “We had a whole cadre of volunteers who were trained in how to tell the story and strategize about asking. For most of us, it was the largest charitable gift and sometimes it was the first that anyone had done.” Each museum board member pledged the largest charitable gifts they had ever given. Museum staff, independent of their management, organized their own giving campaign and personally raised $100,000 over three years through regular paycheck deductions.

“In the early period, there were people who assumed the way we would ask ourselves to give would be strictly along ethnic lines,” says Takekawa. “But we realized we were moved to action more based on affinity groups. And sometimes that’s ethnic groups. But (Wing Luke is) 42 years old and (has) a history of working with community groups.”

A group of Asian-American educators who had worked with the museum organized a fundraising group that developed a youth space in the museum named after Frank Fujii – a prominent local educator, sports coach and the first Asian-American administrator in the Seattle Central Community College system. Another group of artists helped raise money to dedicate the museum’s contemporary art space to local sculptor George Tsutakawa. Other spaces will be named after longtime community leaders including former Gov. Gary Locke, Ping and Ruby Chow (the former restaurateur and King County Council member) and Ron Chew.

While Chew decided to step down as Executive Director after 17 years in order to write and to serve as faculty in the University of Washington’s Museum Studies program, he made it his last official duty to oversee the museum’s capital campaign. Altogether, the museum had over 1,500 individual donors, and its capital campaign met its ambitious fundraising goals. The work isn’t done yet, as the museum still needs to raise an endowment large enough to sustain its new building well into the future. But the accomplishment alone is remarkable.

“It’s really hard to survive if you’re a midsized cultural organization,” says Takekawa, “and then if you’re a community of color it’s even more difficult.” Without a peer group of similar, established institutions, and based in an immigrant community without the kind of financial resources similar-sized museums typically rely upon, Wing Luke has charted its own course. During its capital campaign, it reached out to similar minority history and culture museums – first through the Working Capital Fund for Minority Cultural Institutions, and now through a loose-knit, related group. “Since we’re not old society, you have to build your own,” says Takekawa. Working with these museums that serve African-American, Jewish and other communities, she notes, “I’ve really been heartened.”

It’s this sense of progress for the broader community that animates museum employees as they talk about the organization’s expansion. The museum will open in its new building during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 31, and begin its regular operations the following week.

When it does, it will have successfully transformed a space built by Chinese immigrants in 1910 who were excluded from American citizenship, segregated into the Chinatown neighborhood, and barred from all but the most menial jobs by racist employers and unions. And the museum will have enabled the local Asian American community to preserve and reclaim a space long-threatened by Seattle’s increasing gentrification.

In this way, says Chinn, the East Kong Yick building’s transformation isn’t just about the museum. “It will be a physical representation of where we’ve come over the last century.”

WING LUKE ASIAN MUSEUM’S COMMUNITY GRAND OPENING
Saturday, May 31, 11a.m. - 6p.m.
Ribbon cutting and outdoor program at 10a.m.; multicultural drumming performance and live entertainment outside the building

Sunday, June 1, 12p.m. - 5p.m.
Cultural ceremony at 11:30a.m.; lion and dragon dances outside the building

Both days
Tours of the new Wing Luke Asian Museum; hip-hop performance and workshops; Hawaiian interactive exhibit; limited-edition specials at The Marketplace inside the museum.

Special Features
COMMUNITY PORTRAIT GALLERIES - Featuring Filipino, Vietnamese, and Asian Indian communities, as well as the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial.

SPECIAL EXHIBITION HALL - Main gallery showcases special exhibitions on various Asian Pacific American topics.

GEORGE TSUTAKAWA ART GALLERY - Feeaturing pioneer and up-and-coming Asian Pacific American artists.

HISTORIC IMMERSION EXHIBITS - Includes the Yick Fung Company, Canton Alley Family Apartment, historic apartments and Family Associations.

NEW DIALOGUES INITIATIVE - Exhibition space to initiate mindful dialogues on current events and contemporary issues affecting the Asian Pacific American community.

TATEUCHI STORY THEATRE - A 59-seat venue is equipped with state-of-the-art multimedia.

GOVERNOR GARY LOCKE LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY HERITAGE CENTER - The premier resource for Asian Pacific American history, art and culture in the Pacific Northwest, with books, journals, news articles, videos and research materials, as well as archives and collections showcasing rare artifacts, photographs and oral histories. Staff-assisted research and database tools are available.

KidPLACE - Highlights exhibitions aimed for younger museum visitors.

FRANK FUJII YOUTH SPACE - Artwork and programming by the Museum’s youth programs.

THE MARKETPLACE - Exclusive artwork and jewelry from local Asian Pacific American artists, educational items and signature merchandise for purchase.

COMMUNITY HALL - Group-usage facility is ideal for large gatherings with reception area, catering kitchen and multimedia system.

General Information
719 South King St. - Seattle, WA 98104
Chinatown-International District
206.623.5124 | www.wingluke.org

Museum hours beginning June 3, 2008:
Tuesday-Sunday 10a.m. - 5p.m.; Closed on Monday
First Thursday and third Saturday of the month 10a.m. - 8p.m.

General admission:
Adult (18-61) $8; Seniors (62+) $6; Students grades 6 and above $6; Students grades K-5 $5; Kids ages 5-12 $5; Kids under 5 free
Free Days: General admission is free every First Thursday and Third Saturday of the month.

Public Transportation: The Museum is within the ride free zone, and is walking distance from the International District-Chinatown Bus Tunnel Station and bus routes 7, 14, and 36.