Gallery Programs

Happy Lunar New Year

For grades K-6. Available January 7, 2008 through February 16, 2008.

Through a guided interactive gallery program, students learn about one of the most important and long-standing holiday for Chinese communities in America and all over the world. How do people get ready for Lunar New Year? What are the meanings behind the various customs? How have Chinese Americans preserved and adapted these customs? What makes the Lunar New Year celebration unique and what makes it universal?

         Fee: $2 per student; $4 per adult

 
Family Journeys:  The Chinese American Experience

Through an examination of personal artifacts, photographs, documents and oral histories from the Museum’s collection, students will explore the Chinese American experience from past to present. Visitors will learn about successive waves of Chinese immigrants, their motivations for coming, where they settled, how they were treated, how they adapted to their new life, and how they shaped American society. Hands-on activities with primary sources will encourage students to delve deeper into pertinent themes and to make connections with their personal experience. 

Fee: $2 per student; $4 per adult

Where do Stereotypes Come From? 

For grades 7 and above.

Looking at the Museum’s collection, students will interpret representations of Chinese in the Americas within political cartoons, advertisements, and pop culture from the 19th century to the present. Through a series of document-based exercises, students will explore the material origins of social fears such as xenophobia and racism within American history, and make connections between representations of race and labor relations, immigration and naturalization policies, and international affairs.

        Fee: $2 per student; $4 per adult 

The Chinese American Movement

For grades 9 and above.

How does a community respond to injustice? Looking at examples of dissent and protest from the 19th century to the present day, students will examine the ways in which Chinatown has utilized collective action, direct action demonstrations, public opinion and the press, and electoral politics in movements for social justice and self-determination of the community. Students will examine the relationship between activism and arts and culture in the development of Chinese American identity, and locate the Chinese American movement within the larger context of Asian America. By hearing personal stories of Chinatown activists, students are led to consider the particular challenges that face social organizers within largely immigrant communities. 

         Fee: $2 per student; $4 per adult