Please note that in-person research appointments and onsite access to MOCA’s Collections and Research Center will be paused temporarily from June to September 2025, as our staff actively move the collections onto new shelf locations in our new space at 215 Centre Street. 

MOCA’s Collections and Research Center, now located in its permanent home at 215 Centre Street, archivally preserves and provides research access to the museum’s vast collection of 85,000+ objects documenting New York Chinatown and Chinese American history.

Research Requests

The Collections and Research Center strives to provide robust remote research services and is usually open to in-person research on Mondays-Thursdays 10 am – 5 pm by prior appointment. For assistance with research-related questions or to request in-person research access to MOCA’s archives, please email MOCA’s Collections Department at collections@mocanyc.org, and include a brief description of your research and any requests of specific collections or materials you would like to view. Collections are available for researchers to access free of charge by appointment. A licensing fee will apply for publication use.

Search MOCA’s Online Catalogs

To facilitate research and use of our collections, our staff is constantly updating and expanding our remotely searchable and accessible catalogs of artifacts, photographs, journals, books, documents, and oral histories from MOCA’s extensive collection. Currently, MOCA has digitized around 30% of its collections. The digitized items are available on the following three research platforms. The use of the three allows them to complement one another and present the entirety of our collection.

PastPerfect – Item-level database

ArchivesSpace – Finding aids for general overview of the collections

OHMS – Online access to oral histories