She looked for Asian artists living or working in Los Angeles and found that the work she was especially drawn to were by female artists. “As a curator, I know artists can fill that out in a rich way.”Ī still from "Bojagi," a video artwork by Ahree Lee, who took vintage home movies from Asian Americans and turned the imagery in video graphics with a kaleidoscopic effect. “The Asian experience and the Asian American experience is so flattened by the way we typically talk about it,” said Hall, who organized the show. The current exhibition, “We Are Here: Contemporary Art and Asian Voices in Los Angeles," which opened just a couple of days before the pandemic closed it, features seven female artists of Asian descent. Today it's committed to moving exhibitions away from stereotypes and toward a wider, more complex view of Asian culture and identity. The museum was built on Asian art typically collected by Westerners in the 20th century (think Chinese ceramics from the Neolithic to the Qing dynasties and Japanese prints from the Edo period), but it also was the among the first American museums to mount a contemporary Chinese art exhibition, "Beyond the Open Door: Contemporary Paintings From the People’s Republic of China," in 1987.
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“By sharing power, by letting other people in.”Īs museum staffers are reviewing how to present their permanent collection, they also want to refocus their temporary shows, regularly bringing in contemporary subject matter. “That's how we decolonize our practices," she said. She said the museum was working with researchers and making the collection available online “to help us in this project of hopefully finding a connection, so we could potentially make a match.” When asked whether the museum would automatically return objects if matches were found, Montagano said the institution would have a public discussion and bring in the community to decide what to do.
Those statue heads and temple remnants belong to things that are in Southeast Asia, right?” We have heads upon heads in our collection. Montagano acknowledged that the Pacific Asia Museum has “objects that were obtained through colonial appropriation. A Pacific Asia spokesperson said the disputed objects in the Pasadena museum's collection were "seized in place," and to this day they remain awaiting the FBI to provide details for repatriation.
In 2008 the Pacific Asia Museum was among four Southern California museums raided during a federal investigation into illegally exported Asian antiquities the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego later returned more than 600 objects to Thailand. This question plagues Asian antiquities held in foreign museums since many objects were taken out of their countries of origin before antiquities laws were enacted or enforced, or were simply stolen from historical or sacred sites. “It was an impetus for us to launch a new initiative,” said Montagano, referring to the Pacific Asia Museum's announcement last fall that is was setting out “to deconstruct Orientalism through collections management, exhibitions and programming.“Īnother task is to study provenance, the history of where objects came from and how they were acquired and transferred. As part of USC, they knew Asian students who were afraid to go out in public, even to visit the grocery store. The pandemic did prompt Disney to scuttle the movie’s theatrical release, and the hostility expressed in such close proximity to the museum alarmed staffers. The phrase made a link between COVID-19 and China, articulating what some people were wishing for both.
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“We had a 'Mulan' movie poster on a bus stop outside the museum,” she said, "and on it was written in graffiti: ‘kung flu canceled.’” (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)Īs the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the world spiraled into shutdown last year, a disturbing trend caught the attention of Bethany Montagano, director of the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, and her staff.
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In preparation for the reopening of the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Victor Garcia removes boards that were placed on front windows to protect against vandalism.
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