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A visitor viewing the With A Single Step, Stories In The Making Of America exhibit at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City. Photo: AFP
A New York City museum dedicated to telling Chinese American history marked its reopening to the public recently, with an exhibit on Asian Americans and racism that it curated partially through submissions gathered during the pandemic and a surge of anti-Asian bias incidents around the country.
The opening was a long time coming for the Museum of Chinese in America, not only because of the pandemic shutdown of over a year but because of a fire that ravaged though the space where its collection was housed in January 2020.
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Crowds gather to protest gentrification, mass incarceration as Museum of Chinese in America reopens
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A museum in New York City’s Chinatown that recently reopened after its archives were damaged by a fire last year is now facing more heat as protestors gather to boycott the institution.
The protest: The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) reopened on Wednesday, since shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to a crowd of protestors accusing the institution of supporting mass incarceration and gentrification, reported Hyperallergenic.
The museum allegedly accepted a $35 million concession included in a “community give-back” program as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to shut down Rikers Island and build four smaller detention centers throughout the city in its place. One of which would be at Chinatown’s 125 White Street.
Protestors in front of the Museum of Chinese in America at its reopening Photo: Youth Against Displacement @YADArmy1 via Twitter
A crowd of demonstrators rallied in front of New York’s Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) yesterday. They were protesting what they see as the institution’s support of a jail expansion plan and to denounce the board’s co-chair Jonathan Chu, a landlord blamed for the gentrification of Chinatown and for the closure of two unionised restaurants in the neighbourhood.
Earlier this year, an exhibition focusing on the art collective Godzilla was cancelled after several members withdrew from the show, stating that the museum had supported the construction of a new jail in Chinatown when it accepted a $35m concession from the city. The concession is part of a community give-back programme for neighbourhoods affected by the construction of new jails after the planned closure of the Rikers Island prison complex.