As the Chinese New Year approaches, the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) is busy decorating and preparing for the holiday, during which it will offer special family-focused events The museum, a refined space in the heart of Chinatown with more than 65,000 precious artifacts, offers a wide variety of public programming, from guided tours to public talks, and hands-on art workshops to traditional Chinese food cooking classes, family festivals, and Chinese folk dance performances, MOCA has designed a whole slew of activities to showcase Chinese culture and the distinctive history of Chinese immigration in the United States.
35th Anniversary Exhibit: “Waves of Identity”
MOCA is celebrating its 35th anniversary with the temporary exhibition “Waves of Identity: 35 Years of Archiving,” on display through March 1. The groundbreaking exhibit unveils the journey and development of the Chinese-American legacy.
“The Chinese-American experience is one of the very first major immigration experiences after the European immigrants,” says Joy Liu, MOCA’s education director. “There are patterns of the history. When you learn about this history, you’ll be able to reflect, understand, and make connections with the other immigrant groups and populations.”
The exhibit tells the story of the shared past of Chinese Americans, touching on questions such as: “Where does Chinatown end?” and more abstract queries, such as how history becomes memory. These themes are explored through different art forms such as installations, paintings, videos, prints, and models.
MOCACreate is a recurring activity that provides kids and families with the opportunitiy to create art at the museum on the first and third Saturdays of each month.
For example, at the upcoming MOCACreate workshop on February 21, participants will craft New Year’s decorations that will be displayed during the Lunar New Year Family Festival. Previous MOCACreate workshops have focused on refugees paper-folding teaches this traditional folk art while providing insight into the history of the Golden Venture tragedy. The print-making MOCACreate workshop pulls inspiration from the historical and contemporary issues presented in Philip Chen’s print exhibition, focused on significant moments in Chinese-American history, to create kids friendly workshops and activities.
Most of the MOCACreate workshops invite 25 to 30 participants with one-on-one based art making sessions. Usually the workshops are drop-in, so no reservation is needed except special festival activities such as the upcoming Lunar New Year workshop.
MOCAFamily: Lunar New Year Festival
2015 is the Year of Sheep, according to the Lunar calendar, and MOCA has planned a bunch of fun activities to ring in the Lunar New Year. MOCA’S celebration, which will take place on Saturday, February 28, will include an awe-inspiring lion dance, New Year Festival Dances withChinatown’s Red Silk Dancers, traditional folk arts, zodiac-themed arts and crafts, story-telling sessions, and more.
The Lunar New Year Festival is one of the four annual family festivals celebrated at MOCA . The other three are the Qing Ming Family Festival in April, the Dragon Boat Family Festival in June, and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Through the colorful activities of the four annual family festivals, themes of identity, community, culture, immigration, and journeys of Chinese Americans are presented in a delightful setting in front of kids and families.
MOCA also offers special guided tours for children and families. During the weekend, Public Gallery Talks occur at 2:45pm every Sunday. These hour-long talks guide visitors through the museum’s core exhibit “With a Single Step: Stories in the Making of America,” and provide an overview of Chinese in America from the 19th century to today.
Right now, the tour for Waves if Identity: 35 Years of Archiving tells the origin and the process of the Golden Venture through the art objects in the exhibition. The tour offers a clear and vivid introduction of the crashed ship full of refugees as well as a thorough explanation of the immigration history.
Public Weekend Walking Tours ($15/adult, $12/student & seniors) go beyond the museum’s walls to provide a sense of what life was and currently is like in Chinatown, by visiting landmarks and historic streets around Chinatown. The “Preparing for the New Year in Chinatown” tour is running now through February 22, and teaches participants about Lunar New Year traditions and customs by showing how the neighborhood transforms for the holiday.
(Insider tip from Communications Manager Maureen Hoon and Education Director Joy Liu: whether you’re on a tour or not, ask questions while visiting the museum! You can ask the front desk for the activity sheet to assist you with the tour.)
Afterschool Programs
MOCA also offers diverse afterschool programs for elementary and high school students, such as digital art-making and a history learning program. For younger kids, MOCA is collaborating with the Cool Culture program to promote art and culture among pre-Kindergarteners and Kindergarteners.
After attending the afterschool programs, many young people, especially Chinese-Americans in their teens to their mid-20s, go on to volunteer in the museum because they see it as a safe place both to learn–as the exhibits chronicle underrepresented facets of the Chinese-American experience–and to contribute to their community.
“I think [the museum] does serve the Asian-American population a great deal and help to shape their identities, because they learn things and are exposed to things that they wouldn’t have in their kind of normal work or school life,”says Liu. “We tell the untold story.”
