Create prints with sunlight in a hands-on activity inspired by the cyanotypes of Wu Chi-Tsung, a featured artist in Lightscapes: Re-envisioning the Shanshuihua 光之景: 山水畫的當代想像. You’ll be able to make your own cyanotype prints and visit the immersive exhibition. Admission to the museum and this family program is FREE. All materials will be provided. Event page.

Family History Workshop

Saturday, June 8, 2019 | 2:30 – 3:30pm

Southern California Genealogical Society

417 Irving Dr | Burbank, CA 91504

CAM will present a Family History workshop at the Southern California Genealogical Society. This workshop will explore family activities that encourage recording and interpreting family histories through inter-generational exchange. There will be a brief introduction about the museum and discussion on how to facilitate your own family history activities with children 4th grade and up. All materials will be provided; participants will receive a copy of the museum’s publication “Family History Scrapbook,” which features twelve engaging activities based on topics of immigration, recipes, food, celebrations, heirlooms, jobs, and music. Event page.

To RSVP, email rsvp@camla.org with the subject line “Family History Workshop.”

Family Day – Storytime

Saturday, April 27, 2019 | 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Chinese American Museum

425 N. Los Angeles Street | Los Angeles, CA 90012

Listening and sharing our stories is a great way to learn about each other. Join us for scheduled book readings at the museum. Hands-on activities will accompany the story-time readings throughout the day including a Spring tea meditation and art-making. Admission to the museum and this family program is FREE. All materials will be provided. Event page.

150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad Lecture

Tuesday, May 7, 2019 | 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Chinese American Museum

425 N. Los Angeles Street | Los Angeles, CA 90012

Join us for a lecture and reception commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad with speaker and Associate Professor Julia H. Lee of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

On May 10, 1869, the railroads were joined in Promontory, Utah linking the east and west coasts. Facing poverty and civil war at home, laborers from Guangdong Province in China left home to make a living to support their families. Chinese railroad laborers were the first wave of Chinese immigrants in the United States and were recruited by railroad labor contractors to do dangerous and difficult jobs. This lecture will explore how the contributions of these workers to the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad were ignored and erased from the historical record and how Chinese American authors, artists, and descendants of the railroad workers have responded to this injustice as well as to the broader exclusion of Asians from the United States. Event page.

Survival and Loss: A Joint Discussion of Los Angeles and San Francisco Chinatowns

Thursday, March 7, 2019 | 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Room #405 (4th Floor)

501 North Main Street | Los Angeles, CA 90012

Join California Historical Society and the Chinese American Museum at our host venue, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes for a panel discussion on the dual creation, maintenance, preservation, and future of Los Angeles and San Francisco’s Chinatowns. Moderated by UC Riverside Associate Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program, Catherine Gudis, we will explore with historians, advocates, artists, and media specialists how these two Chinatowns emerged, were threatened, survived, and thrived. We will also consider possible futures for both as well as posit how we all can better celebrate and support these two historic spaces.

After the panel, join us at the Chinese American Museum for light snacks and a special evening viewing our exhibitions.

Speakers:

Moderated by: Cathy Gudis | Associate Professor of History and Director of UC Riverside’s Public History Program

Nayan Shah | Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California

Eddie Wong | Co-founder of Visual Communications

Steven Wong | Curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, formerly Interim Executive Director and Curator of the Chinese American Museum

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu | Professor and Chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

Visit the Facebook event page here. Download the event flyer here.

Meet our Moderator:

Cathy Gudis is Associate Professor of History and Director of UC Riverside’s Public History Program. She has worked for over twenty years with art and history museums, in historic preservation, and on multi-platform, place-based projects that focus on Southern California and explore how public space is privatized, landscapes racialized, and inequalities of access sustained. She co-founded two collectives: Project 51, whose Play the LA River urges Angelinos to reclaim the L.A. River as public space, and the Bureau of Goods Transport, a clearinghouse to explore the history and import of logistics from the LA Ports to the Inland Empire. Currently, Cathy is piloting the Relevancy & History Project partnership between UCR and California State Parks, aimed to foster community engagement and co-produce more inclusive historical interpretation. The author of Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Landscape (Routledge, 2004) and coedited anthologies and articles on visual culture, Cathy is working on a book entitled Skid Row, By Design: History, Community, and Activism in Downtown L.A.

About our Panelists:

Nayan Shah is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California. He is a historian with expertise U.S. and Canadian immigration, public health, law and Asian American political, social and cultural movements. Professor Shah wrote two award-winning books, Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West (University of California Press, 2011) and Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (University of California Press, 2001). He has worked with the National Park Service, Angel Island Foundation and the New York Historical Society to preserve, interpret and convey the history of Asian Americans. To learn more about his research projects and publications visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1043400.

Eddie Wong was one of the founders of Visual Communications where he directed the documentary films Wong Sinsaang, Pieces of a Dream, and Chinatown Two-Step. He served as Executive Director of NAATA/Center for Asian American Media from 1996 to 2006 and was the Executive Producer of Kelly Loves Tony and the series Searching for Asian America for PBS.

He later became the Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) and produced several short video profiles of immigrants who were detained at Angel Island. In 2014, he served as Guest Curator for the Smithsonian Institution’s Asian Pacific American Center’s “A Day in the Life of Asian Pacific America,” an online photo and video exhibition. His article “Broken Blossoms – Four Chinese Women and Their Journey from Slavery to Freedom” was published as the cover story in Prologue, the magazine of the National Archives, in Spring 2016.

He is currently co-curating “At First Light: The Dawn of Asian Pacific America,” a retrospective of Visual Communications first 20 years of documentary work in still photography, film, and video. The exhibit will be on display at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles from May 25, 2019 to October 20, 2019.

Steven Wong was born in the City of Angeles at Queen of Angels Hospital, a place that no longer exists. He is currently a curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park. Previously he was the Interim Executive Director and the senior staff curator at the Chinese American Museum where he developed and implemented both contemporary art and history exhibitions. Steven has lectured at UC Santa Barbara and was an adjunct professor at Ventura College and Pasadena City College in Asian American Studies, History and Art Studio Departments. Since 2001 Steven has been collecting vintage postcards primarily depicting Los Angeles’ Chinatown and has amassed over 300 postcards; some of which he has transformed into art and public engagement projects over the years. Steven holds a Masters in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (1998) and a Master in Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2000).

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University and previously taught for seventeen years at Ohio State University. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013). Her current book project, a collaboration with political scientist Gwendolyn Mink, explores the political career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color U.S. congressional representative and the co-sponsor of Title IX. Wu also co-edited Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, 8th Edition (Oxford 2015), Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (Brill 2017), and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (2012-2017). She also co-edits Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (Alexander Street Press).

In partnership with the Chinese American Museum, the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes