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The new expanded and relocated Wing Luke Asian Museum is hosting free, public openings Saturday, May 31 and Sunday, June 1. That’s this weekend!

Wing Luke Asian Museum
Community grand opening
Saturday, May 31 and Sunday, June 1
Saturday: 11 to 6pm., ribbon cutting at 10 am
Sunday: 12 to 5pm
719 South King Street
Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.
Free
More info:
WingLuke.Org/Home.html

In case you miss it, general admission is free every first Thursday for Art Walk and third Saturday of the month.

Congrats to the Wing Luke Museum! —DK

UPDATE: July 2008

Just found this cover story about the reopening of the Wing Luke Asian Art Museum in the May 2008 issue of ColorsNW.

Here’s a bit of background about Ron Chew, who directed the Wing Luke for 17 years:

Chew found himself inspired by activists’ campaigns to save the International District from redevelopment in the wake of the nearby Kingdome’s construction. “Would this neighborhood, a cradle of Asian-American history, a place I considered home, survive?” Chew recalled thinking in reminiscences he later wrote for the International Examiner. “

From 1975 until 1988, I centered myself… in the world of community journalism… I worked with – and learned alongside – dozens of other wide-eyed student activists who, like me, were rediscovering their heritage and their community.”

In the process, he transformed the International Examiner into a mouthpiece for neighborhood preservation politics and local Asian-American culture.

Working there might have been nontraditional for a museum director, but it gave Chew great appreciation for and awareness of the community the museum represents. In an interview with the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, Chew later recalled that when he first arrived at the museum, “it was more about objects, more about Asian things, and not so much about Asian-American history, culture and art.”

He told the Community Arts Network that while he was the museum’s third director, “the previous two directors were white and from outside the community. The previous focus of the museum was on educating the general public.”

He immediately set to work to change that. “I didn’t want a museum that was a static, dead place that was about the past. I wanted a museum that would be engaged with the community, dealing with its needs and concerns.

And the museum was small enough to provide me that option to promote that vision.” —Read full text of Pan-Asian Perspectives: New Wing Luke Museum brings the people togetherColorsNW magazine