I went recently to the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) on one of those perfect New York City days. It was beautiful outside, I walked downtown from Grand Central, and showed up to the museum only to find out it's free on Thursdays. Glory. It's a really fascinating place and I definitely recommend it, but since I've now worked in a few museums, I find myself looking at the space and presentation more critically. (Which is fun.)
The permanent exhibition is dense, which can be overwhelming, since lots of information is up on the wall and it can be tricky to figure out what to read first. There are also lots of interactive and hands-on components, which were great. One of my favorites was a replication of a 1903 Chinese-English phrase book that you could leaf through. Of course, the phrases were all work-related, since many Chinese came over to build railroads and do construction.
It was also eerie to see the propaganda used to denigrate Chinese immigrants, as it directly echoes the language used today against Latino immigrants. To quote the museum text:
When white labor began to organize for higher wages, American capitalists turned to Chinese workers to fill the need for human labor to open the frontier, fuel the industrial revolution, and support a new middle-class lifestyle. The Chinese were caught between big industry and labor. Many employers hired "heathen chinese" as strikebreakers.
Labor organizers used ideas of white supremacy to rally the working class. Prevented from joining labor unions, Chinese demands for better working conditions fell into obscurity. White workers branded the Chinese as the enemy, accusing them of stealing jobs and being unfit for citizenship.
In 1892, the Chinese Six Companies called on all 110,000 Chinese living in the U.S. to disobey the Geary Act, a new law that required every Chinese to carry an identification card - a practice with roots in slavery. It provided for the deportation of Chinese who were caught not carrying a certificate of residence, and it required the testimony of two whites to confirm a Chinese person's immigration status. It was the first federal law making race an explicit condition for the right to testify. Thousands protested, risking deportation and a year of hard labor.
In addition to general text and information, the interactive portions included ironing tools you could pick up (they're heavy!) chairs you could sit in that would activate an immigration interview, drawers to open, and a television set up in a kind of a mock living room space. The diversity of ways in which to receive information was refreshing.
My problem with the exhibition is that some parts of it seemed to be interactive for the sake of interaction, with no real rhyme or reason. You could open drawers to look at more information and photos, but I was never clear on
why they were in drawers. I got the sense that the exhibit was meant to mimic someone's home, and the museum-goer is sort of rummaging through their history. Parts of that came through, and parts didn't. For instance, in one part of the exhibit, there was an old suitcase attached to the bottom of the table. Since the gallery had included so many little hands-on surprises, I opened the suitcase, only to find that it was full of cables and wires connecting to a screen. Oops.
That being said, I enjoyed the exhibit as a whole and it presented a story that I knew very little about. The prejudice and discrimination faced by the Chinese in this country is pretty horrifying, and continued until World War II, when we had a new enemy: the Japanese. Suddenly, America was singing a different tune.
In the interest of brevity (I might have already failed at that), I'll stop now, but if you're interested in immigration, it's a worthwhile visit. And free on Thursdays! 太好了！
The permanent exhibition is dense, which can be overwhelming, since lots of information is up on the wall and it can be tricky to figure out what to read first. There are also lots of interactive and hands-on components, which were great. One of my favorites was a replication of a 1903 Chinese-English phrase book that you could leaf through. Of course, the phrases were all work-related, since many Chinese came over to build railroads and do construction.
It was also eerie to see the propaganda used to denigrate Chinese immigrants, as it directly echoes the language used today against Latino immigrants. To quote the museum text: 
In addition to general text and information, the interactive portions included ironing tools you could pick up (they're heavy!) chairs you could sit in that would activate an immigration interview, drawers to open, and a television set up in a kind of a mock living room space. The diversity of ways in which to receive information was refreshing.
My problem with the exhibition is that some parts of it seemed to be interactive for the sake of interaction, with no real rhyme or reason. You could open drawers to look at more information and photos, but I was never clear on why they were in drawers. I got the sense that the exhibit was meant to mimic someone's home, and the museum-goer is sort of rummaging through their history. Parts of that came through, and parts didn't. For instance, in one part of the exhibit, there was an old suitcase attached to the bottom of the table. Since the gallery had included so many little hands-on surprises, I opened the suitcase, only to find that it was full of cables and wires connecting to a screen. Oops.
That being said, I enjoyed the exhibit as a whole and it presented a story that I knew very little about. The prejudice and discrimination faced by the Chinese in this country is pretty horrifying, and continued until World War II, when we had a new enemy: the Japanese. Suddenly, America was singing a different tune.
In the interest of brevity (I might have already failed at that), I'll stop now, but if you're interested in immigration, it's a worthwhile visit. And free on Thursdays! 太好了！
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