MR.
SUAREZ: For our final discussion of this day
long series of discussions I'd like to bring
to the stage Claudine Brown the Assistant
Secretary for Education and Access of the
Smithsonian Institution who will introduce
the final panel, Claudine.
CLAUDINE BROWN: I am Claudine Brown.
I'd like to say thank you to Kip, Hard act
to follow.
I saw the show at the Japanese American National
Museum and it was incredibly powerful.
This particular panel which is the last of
the day addresses museums and the multi-dimensional
American story.
I am familiar with the origins of all four
of the museums represented today, and believe
that they being to help us to understand the
fight for having our stories told and having
our messages be heard.
I will introduce you to
those individuals who are participating on
the panel.
To my far right is Lawrence Pijeaux, and he
is the President and CEO of the Birmingham
Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama.
To my immediate left is Beth Takekawa.
She is the Executive Director of the Wing
Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American
Experience, which is in Seattle,
Washington.
To her left is Helen Samhan who is the Senior
Outreach Advisor for the Arab American National
Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
I hope joining us shortly will be Carlos Tortolero,
President of the National Museum of Mexican
Art in Chicago, Illinois.
I've asked each of them to take about 10 minutes
to tell you a little bit about their
museums, and after that here's Carlos.
Let me give him a chance to join us, thank
you.
So each of them will tell you a little bit
about their museums, and then we will have
a discussion here, and we will open that discussion
to the audience.
I am going to ask Lawrence to start.
LAWRENCE PIJEAUX: Good afternoon.
MULTIPLE SPEAKERS: Good afternoon.
MR.
PIJEAUX: It's a good afternoon.
We're all here.
I have truly enjoyed today's program.
I want to thank Claudine Brown for extending
an invitation for me to participate in
this program.
I also thank everyone who played some role
in dealing with the logistics that brought
me here from Birmingham, Alabama.
I'm also happy that I have been here all day.
I've learned a lot.
I'll go back home with quite a bit of information.
I'll share with you some things that really
caught my attention during the program today.
Listening to Joseph
Henry's comments about race.
He said something about the history of the
Smithsonian and how his comments may play
it out, and how this institution has evolved.
I also enjoyed Dr.
Price who talked about forgetfulness and amnesia.
In my part of the world we talk about selective
amnesia, Dr. Price.
He also mentioned living in the shadows.
He rattled off a couple of shadows including
slavery, the slave trade.
I'd like to add to that list segregation.
We like to forget about that.
Dr. Thomas talked about the fact that others
tend to
tell the history of ethnic groups and coaches
that they might not have a whole lot of information
about.
As I listened to the presenters today, the
underlying theme for me was inclusion.
I'm reminded that the more things change the
more they remain the same.
Some of these conversations I've been involved
in for the 17 years that I've been at
the Birmingham Civil Rights institute.
With that said, let me just tell you a little
bit about the institute.
I'll tell you about its beginning, which was
a pretty tough
time in the city of Birmingham.
A little about our exhibition and some of
the things that we feel pretty good about,
some of our accomplishments and I'll conclude
with some of the challenges that I see.
Our mission, which drives us every day is
to promote civil and human rights worldwide
through education.
In the mid-1970s, former
mayor David Vann (the last white mayor we've
had in Birmingham) took a trip to Israel and
paid a visit to several of the museums there.
He returned to Birmingham in the mid-'70s
talking about the city chronicling its civil
rights history.
That went to deaf ears.
No one in the city was interested in bringing
that history to light.
However, Dr.
Richard Arrington Jr. in 1979 picked up a
baton.
He too had some challenges with that project,
and actually sold a building in Birmingham,
Alabama to find the seed
money to put up the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute.
Behind me you're looking at the facility before
it was completed.
What Dr. Arrington did was create a study
group.
That study group evolved into a task force
that was formed in 1986, and ultimately our
facility opened in 1992.
You can see that this whole notion of a Birmingham
Civil Rights Institute
took about 15 to 16 years to really move from
idea to a facility.
When it opened it cost approximately 14 million
dollars, we think.
By now it would be three to four times that
amount.
One of the problems that both Mayor Vann and
Dr. Arrington ran into was that people did
not want to talk about the history of the
movement.
They were afraid that this
institution would open old wounds.
We didn't have a track record.
We were new in the arena at the time.
The only other Civil Rights museum that preceded
us by one year was the
National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.
There was a big concern about what we might
do.
Our exhibitions, they include videos, original
artifacts, replicas of artifacts, newspaper
clippings, and we have an extensive oral history
project.
We've interviewed over 600 individuals who
were actively involved in the movement.
One of the
things that many people come to see is the
original jail cell door that behind that door
Dr. Martin Luther King wrote a very famous
letter from Birmingham Jail.
It's become, in many ways, a wishing well.
People throw coins behind the door, and say
prayers, and say things that are designed
to promote world peace, and they are hoping
that they can return
to their respective communities and make things
better.
Some of the things that we feel pretty good
about, in 2005 we were accredited by the American
Association of Museums.
At the time we were the only African American
History Museum accredited by AAM.
In 2007 we became an affiliate of the Smithsonian
Institution, and we're pretty proud of that.
We've received two national awards, both at
the White House, one in 2006, the other in
2007.
I think if you forget about the politics of
it all, it's really great to find yourself
at the
White House receiving an award for some work
that you've been involved in.
Both of the awards were related to our work
with young people.
The first was called the Coming up Taller
Award [phonetic] which was specifically designed
for our work with a group of inner-city middle
school students.
The other, the National Medal, that was presented
to
us because of our work in the community at
large.
Both awards were presented by former First
Lady Laura Bush.
In 2009, we were recognized as the state attraction
of the year.
Let me put that in perspective, we are in
Birmingham, Alabama.
We promote civil and human rights.
You know what the state is going through right
now with immigration and a lot of things related
to the legislation that we have in the state
regarding immigration, and we were recognized
by the state for our work.
In 2009, I had the pleasure of being nominated
by the 44th President, Barack Obama to serve
on the Institute of Museum and Library Services
board.
I was confirmed by the senate in 2010.
On a personal note, there's no way while growing
up in New Orleans, Louisiana in the segregated
south needing special permission to visit
libraries and museums, could I have ever imagined
that we'd have an African
American President let alone one who was nominating
me to serve on the board that has some oversight
for institutions that while growing up I had
a tough time visiting.
It's a
big thing, not only for me personally, but
for the institute.
It also speaks to the progress that we have
made in the country, and hopefully the progress
that we'll continue to make.
In 2010, we received a grant from the museums
and community collaborations abroad program,
which amounted to us collaborating with the
Apartheid
Museum in South Africa, and the Mandela House
in South Africa.
Behind me you're looking at a slide related
to the expansion of the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute where we have created a gallery
that shows the relationship between civil
and human rights initiatives worldwide.
I'm going to move to the next slide, which
is of some South
African youngsters who we collaborated with
a few months ago.
The gist of this project was an exchange program.
We had 10 youngsters from inner-city Birmingham
who through Skype were able to connect with
10 high school kids who were affiliated with
either the Apartheid Museum or the Mandela
House.
These youngsters, over time, became friends
and they shared experiences, their high school
experiences.
The youngsters from Birmingham paid a visit
to Johannesburg, spent 10 days there,
learned about what was going on in South Africa,
and became very familiar with the Apartheid
movement.
The youngsters from Johannesburg spent 10
days in Birmingham.
This was one of the most impressive experiences
that we've had with high school students.
The culminating activity was the first Mandela
day in the state of Alabama.
This is the
direction that our institution is moving toward.
We are really focusing in on the relationship
between the Civil Rights Movement and the
influence it has had and
continues to have on Civil Rights Movements
worldwide.
Some of the challenges that I see, the effort
to maintain our relevance.
How do we continue to be relevant?
One of the things we have right now at the
institute is an exhibition titled Living in
Limbo.
It's an exhibition on the lesbian community
in Birmingham, Alabama.
That was really
a reach for us.
We labored on whether or not we would install
this exhibition.
Pleasantly we've been surprised with the positive
feedback we've received, not only from our
community at large, but from the community
around the world.
Sustainability, funding is a real issue, not
only for us, but the museum field in general.
That's an
important piece of our future.
How do we sustain this place?
Last but not least, succession planning, who
follows us?
Those that have been around a while, who replaces
the
group of leaders at the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute?
With that, I will tell you that one of the
concerns I've had since I've been in this
field about 20 years is we do not have enough
young people in the pipeline to replace those
individuals who are leading these museums.
I think it's incumbent upon all of us who
work at museums to do what we can
to increase the pipeline for young people
who see this field as a career path.
Thank you so much for inviting me here.
I've enjoyed my stay, and I look forward to
the question and answer period.
[Applause]
MS.
BROWN: Thank you.
I'm going to ask Helen to be our next speaker.
HELEN SAMHAN: Thank you very much
Claudine.
It's really a pleasure to be here.
Because we are an Arab American museum we
are a little bit the new kids on the block.
I wanted to just spend a little bit of time
just explaining who we are as an ethnic community,
and who we represent as a museum.
We represent many generations, many immigrant
generations of people from Arabic speaking
countries who began coming in the 1880s until
the present.
We represent over 22 current nations of origin
that span two continents in Africa and in
Asia.
People of many
different religious affiliations, and it's
a relatively new ethnic identity.
It's a very American ethnic identity like
Asian Pacific Islander and Latino, it's not
something that has been around as long as
our immigrant population has been around.
Our organizations have promoted an Arab American
identity in the best American traditions for
the
last 40 years.
We represent a population that has very different
experiences and very different views on their
racial identity.
Dr. Price talked about the journey towards
whiteness.
We have a very kind of complex experience
with race in the United States.
The very first pioneers who came at the turn
of the century had to fight for their white
status because of the Asian exclusion laws
that were in place at the time.
Because they came on Turkish passports, many
judges considered them Asian because Turkey
is in Asia,
and therefore they were not allowed to have
citizenship.
They fought very hard to prove that they were
Semites, they were Caucasian, and that they
deserved to be treated as citizens.
They fought that for many decades.
We have really come full circle in our racial
conscious as a community.
There are many in our population who still
are very
comfortably situated in the white middle class.
There are also several new waves of immigration
after the '65 reforms.
These are people who came with a very different
approach.
They came to a different country in our United
States.
We dealt with immigrant and with cultural
and religious difference in a very different
way thanks to the Civil Rights Movement.
There was a proliferation of cultural awareness
and of religious and ethnic assertiveness.
We have many generations now, they're into
their
second generation of people who feel that
they are very much part of the people of color.
Our white status, our white affiliation, and
our racial ambiguity is very much a part of
the people that we represent.
In some ways we have gone from invisibility,
when my grandparents came in the 1890s, it
was all about becoming American.
That whole theory of the
melting pot was very much in vogue to the
current phase of ethnic pride and wanting
to integrate but also be recognized for the
heritage and the contributions that we bring
as ethnic
Americans.
Our museum is in Dearborn, Michigan.
It's not exactly a tourist destination, so
you might ask why did we build it there.
We built it in Dearborn, Michigan, which is
a suburb of Detroit because of an amazing
institution that provided the leadership for
the museum.
That's the Arab Community Center for Economic
and Social Services.
ACCESS
has been serving immigrant populations in
greater Detroit for over 40 years.
They had a very active cultural arts program,
and it got so much in demand that they realized
that maybe it's time for us to think about
a cultural center.
The conception for the museum happened around
the year 2000.
They began to think of how we wanted to
frame this.
Is this an Arab world museum, or is it an
Arab American museum?
It was definitely decided on the side of being
an American museum about the experiences of
our
community here.
We raised over 16 million dollars privately
to build this beautiful building that you
see here, which is in downtown Dearborn across
from city hall.
It was officially opened in the year 2005.
What we decided to do in terms of the thematics
[phonetic] is that we wanted to tell various
parts of our experience in three major themes.
One is the story about coming to America,
whether the people who came in the 1880s or
post-2000 refugees.
The story is also of living in America.
What is it like to be an America of Arab heritage
living in the United States?
The third permanent exhibit in our museum
is called Making an Impact.
That is the one that probably has the most
"ah-
ha" moments for people when they come to our
museum for the first time.
It really showcases prominent Americans in
all different fields who happen to be of Arab
descent.
It's kind of our
wall of fame.
We felt that it's really important, and we've
talked a lot about telling stories and being
part of the narrative.
It's especially important in our community
because of this paradox of being invisible
for many generations and then all of a sudden
being thrust into the political spotlight,
and to in a sense be a very politicized
culture without necessarily having a way to
define ourselves in one place.
Many times it was our political detractors
who were defining us, or it was people who
were trying to paint us as "other" because
of relationships with people in the Arab world.
It was really important that we decided to
tell our own story.
One of the things about the museum I
think that is the most 
important feature of our museum are the things
that happen away from the exhibits and also
the things that happen outside the building,
and in other
states.
We have a very strong commitment to national
programming.
Our educational outreach is perhaps the most
important in-building program where fully
half of the visitors who come are school children.
This is an extremely important part of changing
minds and opening hearts about prejudices
that people might bear about who Arabs
were, Muslims.
We also are a forum, we talked about whether
a museum is a temple or a forum.
In many ways we are a forum by hosting various
segments of the Arab American community, whether
they be artists or writers.
We have a program for artists called D1, which
is an annual conference that we do outside
of Michigan for Arab American
performance artists, fine artists, etcetera.
We have a book award for Arab American writers
where we honor Arab American authors every
year.
We also host conferences for Arab
American scholars.
This is extremely important because Arab American
scholarship is a new field.
There is no formal association of Arab American
scholars.
Most people who study the Arab American community
have to go to the conference MESA, for example,
the Middle East Studies Association, to be
able to discuss issues of Arab American scholarship
and research, even though it really belongs
in American studies.
There is no separate association yet, but
the museum is providing a forum for that.
Also, it has a state of the art research library
and archive.
I think the archival component of our museum
is extremely important, because it provides
one place.
It's the largest repository for research
and writings about the Arab American experience.
I think there's a picture here.
I thought there was a picture of the library,
but the research library and the archive is
extremely important.
It is a place where we collect oral history,
where we collect dissertations, personal artifacts,
family trees, anything that is available around
the country we offer to archive it in our
library.
The other thing I think that's very important
in our experience as a young museum with a
relatively small population is our
collaboration.
We very much have depended upon other ethnic
and culturally-specific museums to help us
with our concepts, with the building of the
museum.
The Japanese American Museum, in particular,
has been our mentor.
We're very, very grateful for our collaboration
with them.
In fact, we have a traveling exhibit that
is going to be one of
the ways that we get the museum out to the
field.
I'm the outreach advisor, so my job is to
take the museum outside of Michigan.
One of the great opportunities we have right
now is a traveling exhibit that is going to
eight cities, and one of them is L.A.
It will go to the Japanese American Museum.
It basically is an exhibition about the century
of national service on the part of Arab Americans.
It's basically military service, peace corps
service, and diplomatic service.
It is intended to kind of
undo some of the stereotypes about loyalty
among Arab Americans, especially after 9/11.
We are very excited that this traveling exhibit
is going to really take our message out to
the field.
I think I want to close by saying that we
also recognize that there are (and we've talked
about this in this conversation) that we do
recognize
that there are problematic about ethnic-specific
museums.
In some ways there is always that fear and
worry about ghettoizing.
Whether it's ghettoizing ourselves as Arab
Americans, or ghettoizing ourselves away from
the general American public, even though we
do a lot of effort to have outreach.
Also, sometimes there's a danger of letting
the larger society feel kind of off the hook.
Oh, well there's an Arab American museum.
We don't have to worry about incorporating
their story into other institutions.
That's
always a problematic.
The third problematic is an internal one in
my own community.
That is that it's a very complex population.
There are many people who are from Arabic
speaking countries who don't even consider
themselves Arabs.
Sometimes I find myself convincing people
whose family came from Lebanon or Syria four
generations ago that they really
will see themselves in this exhibit if they
would only come and get past that concern
about, "Oh, well we're not Arab.
We're Lebanese.
We're - - . We don't deal with that Arab
stuff."
That's just an internal challenge that we
have.
I have to say that despite the fears of ghettoizing
it, I know, as a parent and as an activist,
I know that when I see young people come to
this museum, especially young Arab Americans
who have lived through the last decade of
assault on their ethnic and in some cases
on their
religious heritage, it is a place of refuge,
and it is a place to honor the true story,
the story that used to be told in their grandparents
houses, but it's not what they're hearing
in popular culture.
It's not what they're hearing in the political
discourse.
It is a place where they can really feel proud.
I know that can be a cliché, but I think
in so
many of our experiences as ethnic communities
that maintaining pride in our children is
a very important thing to foster.
I'll just close by saying that we are very
fortunate to
the Smithsonian Institution for granting us
affiliation status.
It has been an enormous boost to our institution,
not only because it gives us a lot of credibility
and a lot of legitimacy.
We are the only Arab American museum in the
country.
We are one of only 140 some recognized affiliates.
To us that is a real badge of honor.
It also helps
open doors even in our own community when
go to do fundraising.
We tell them, "You know, we're an affiliate
of the Smithsonian."
They say, "Oh you are?"
Then they pay attention and it makes a huge
difference in being able to leverage our future.
So with that, I just want to thank you very
much for inviting me, and I look forward to
our conversation.
[Applause]
MS.
BROWN: Thank you.
MS.
BROWN: Next we'll hear from Beth.
[Off MIC conversation]
BETH TAKEKAWA: Okay, thank you Claudine.
I just wanted to start out with a bit of a
sense of place.
The Wing Luke Museum is located in Seattle.
It is a city of 600,000 people in a metropolitan
area of 4 million.
The closest large city to us is Vancouver,
B.C.
Through economics and culture Seattle is a
location that is decidedly Pacific
Rim.
It's entwined with Asia, Vancouver B.C., Alaska,
Hawaii and California.
With, in many ways, more connections to the
Rim than to the East Coast of the U.S.
In Seattle and our county Asian Pacific Americans
comprise over 18% of the population, and are
the largest population of color in the city.
This is the home of the Wing Luke
Museum back when it was constructed in 1910,
and it was known as the East - - building.
With no financial backing from a bank, 170
early Chinese immigrants pooled their money
to fund the construction of the East and West
- - buildings.
These two buildings served as the anchor for
the new Chinatown, providing rooms for rent
and commercial spaces for early businesses
like the first taxi service for Chinese residents,
wholesale food providers and job assigners
to work in the Alaska
salmon canneries.
Seattle's
Chinatown International district is a neighborhood
on the south end of downtown.
It's probably the only area in the continental
U.S. where Chinese, Japanese, Pilipino, African
Americans, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Cambodians
settled together and built one neighborhood.
The Wing Luke Museum has been located in Seattle's
Chinatown International District for
all of its 45 years.
Today it's a neighborhood of small businesses
and rental residences that is culturally rich
and economically depressed.
It's the lowest income census tract
in the city with the highest inventory of
vacant buildings.
The Wing is dedicated to the continued economic
improvement of its neighborhood.
Since opening our expansion in this historic
building in 2008 the wing's recognized as
a neighborhoods second biggest economic engine
next to the Asian supermarket - - . The Wing
has a unique origin
for a museum.
It's the legacy of a community hero named
Wing Luke.
Wing was an immigrant from China who grew
up above his families laundry business in
Seattle.
He joined the U.S. Army.
He was awarded the bronze star, and then Wing
had the audacity to run for city council in
the early 1960s.
Despite a smear campaign, he made history
by being elected in
1962.
He was the first Asian American elected to
public office in the Pacific Northwest and
the first person of color on the council.
He didn't play it safe.
He championed
the 1963 open housing ordinance and other
issues such as Indian fishing rights and preservation
of the historic Pike Place Market.
Tragically, Wing died in a plane crash at
the age of 40.
His family and friends started the Wing Luke
museum, which was one of Wing's dreams.
45 years ago it was started as his legacy.
The museums first
home was a rented storefront a block away
from the historic building you saw in the
earlier photo.
The first fundraising consisted of chow Mein
dinners in a local restaurant, and an auction
of art by local Asian American artists who
at that time had neither funds nor public
profile.
I've seen in our archives the handwritten
budgets for that early
fundraising, and since the food was donated
it seemed to me that 50% of those tiny expenditures
was for booze to encourage the bidding.
Over the years the museum changed as the
community changed, broadening from being Chinese
American to an Asian Pacific American museum.
Changing its presentations from art from Asia
to the stories and art of Asian Americans.
Over the past 20 years, the wing has developed
a community directed approach to all of our
work, including all exhibitions and projects.
Community advisory
committees comprising volunteer participants
meet for a year or more.
Our staff facilitates their decisions on exhibit
themes, storyline, and design.
This results in a high level of community
ownership and empowerment, which sometimes
it is a more complex experience for the visitor,
as there are multiple voices rather than a
single curator voice.
In 2002 the wing had the opportunity to purchase
the historic East - - building.
Over the years it had become largely vacant
and was much the same as it was when it was
first
built.
The building had never been sold, and was
now owned by hundreds of descendants of the
first 170 immigrants who built it.
The prospect of honoring an immigrant legacy
and bringing a cherished home into its future
led to the buildings first change of ownership
in almost a century.
It took the Wing Luke museum 40 years to go
one block, and
to the first home that we owned.
There was the matter of a museum with a 1
million dollar budget raising over 23 million
dollars to turn the vacant historic building
into a community museum with greatly expanded
business operations.
We took the same community development approach
to programing the building as we do to developing
our
exhibitions.
We formed four community advisory committees
involving 65 community volunteers from 12
different ethnic groups ranging in age from
20 to 80, and
spanning first to fourth generations from
immigrant and refugee communities.
Each committee had expertise and examined
a building use.
There were educators and community historians,
neighborhood business owners, and community
activists, exhibitions and civic engagement
folks, and events and arts presenting people.
There was the
matter of raising the money, and we took the
same approach.
Our board members started the fundraising
each giving the largest philanthropic gift
of their lives.
Our staff, who is watching this webcast right
now on the big screen back at the Wing.
Our modestly compensated staff did their own
campaign led by line staff members.
With three-year payroll
deductions based off and on one less latte
per week, and with family gifts, they raised
100,000, which was twice their goal.
After five years, the 23 million dollars was
raised
with significant private and public support.
Also a new market tax credit deal and three-year
pledges from over 1,500 community members.
We opened our expanded home in 2008 and are
now debt-free.
[Applause]
MS.
TAKEKAWA: Thank you.
The Wing Luke Museum today includes intact
historic spaces to immerse visitors
in the lives of early immigrants from Asia.
It also includes 13 exhibition galleries with
a wide range of topics.
Right now our shows include one on Asian American
food, another on the art of Asian American
videogame artists, and a new show coming up
exploring why young women of Asian descent
have the highest suicide rate in their age
demographic.
We provide guided tours of our historic building
as well as guided walking tours that bring
people into neighborhood businesses and historic
buildings.
We welcome
the public to interact with our personal stories,
and to explore our historic neighborhood,
and to share their own stories and legacies
along with ours.
Thank you for including the Wing in this symposium,
and please come by and visit.
[Applause]
MS.
BROWN: Thank you.
Our next but definitely not last speaker is
Carlos
Tortolero.
CARLOS TORTOLERO: Thank you.
You know, a very funny thing happened to me
as I was coming to the podium.
I got a text from my assistant and she's very
calm.
I'm very hyper.
The text said, "Urgent, urgent, urgent.
Call the museum."
I'm thinking oh my God, what's happening?
In 25 years as my assistant she's
never sent me a message.
I'm thinking oh my God, what has happened?
I run out.
She says, "Carlos, Carlos, the White Sox called,
they want you to throw out
the first pitch at a game next week."
I'm a baseball freak.
I'm like, "Alright that's great!
That's great!"
Then she goes, "So how's the conference going?"
"The conference?
Conference!"
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: So I apologize, okay?
I'm throwing out the first pitch!
[Applause]
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: For a moment I forgot where I was
at, it doesn't happen very often.
Okay, now back to - - . First of all, I wanted
- - these are great institutions, great people.
These are the people - - to the field, that's
great.
Also to have Claudine Brown, I'm so happy
that the Smithsonian has positions like hers,
and she's in that position.
Education is very key to her institution.
In fact, when Mr. Bunch spoke earlier and
Lonnie was talking about how education is
so important
to institutions, it is.
I began the museum 30 years ago with a group
of my friends.
All of us were teachers.
None of us knew what we were doing.
I always speak to the school groups, especially
people who are in the museum classes and I
tell them, "Man, if I can do it, you can do
it, because we didn't know what we were doing."
I never thought I was going
to run the museum.
I was a long-haired blue jeaned guy.
I still have the blue jeans.
The hair is having a problem now, so I'll
talk to God about that later.
But anyway…
It just turned out that I enjoyed what I was
doing.
I was good at it, and next thing you know
I'm running the museum.
What's kind of interesting is from the very
beginning, people in
the art world in Chicago, in the museum field,
they were so skeptical about what we were
doing.
It was incredible.
They all said there's no way you can do a
museum in a working-
class neighborhood.
There's no way that you can do an art museum
in a working-class neighborhood, and there's
no way that you can be free in a working-class
neighborhood.
Well, okay.
The museum's been open 25 years.
They were wrong, wrong, wrong.
What's very interesting, if you go to Chicago
and ask those people they would tell you,
"Oh I
knew from the very beginning that it was going
to happen."
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: I'm like Santa Claus, I keep my
list.
So I know who was naughty and who was nice,
okay?
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: They can write their books I can
write my books.
In the go-ahead from the very beginning it
was to build a world-class museum in a working-class
neighborhood.
I thought that was key to our community.
The fact that there was such a large population,
people from
my community, and there was no place to see
our art I thought was absurd and obscene.
We had to change that.
We are the only Latino museum that is accredited
by the American Association of Museums, which
means that we can take care of art as well
as anybody can.
In fact, our collection manager, if God came
to see the artwork, God's going to have
to wear gloves, trust me.
She's that thorough.
She's scary.
That's what you want in that position.
At the same time we wanted to make sure our
museum was accessible to everybody.
Museums are not for everybody.
We have to change that.
The way you change that is by admitting you
have that problem.
We need to make museums accessible for everybody.
The high cost of museums freak me out.
I just went to New York to see the Diego Rivera
show, $25.
Not one person from my community was in that
place.
That isn’t right folks.
That
is our culture, our history, we should have
access to it.
It's interesting that by the time there's
more people of color than ever before in this
country, there's no money.
I don't think that's an accident folks.
I really don't.
Things have to change.
I mentioned before how schools and education
is the key to our institution.
1/3rd of our staff,
1/3rd of our budget goes to education.
1/3rd.
We have this huge education department.
We're in so many schools in Chicago.
We did 300 school tours last year.
We're at about 80 schools in Chicago and advanced
programs.
We are everywhere.
It's very important for the people in education.
The future is always about the young people.
The thing about institutions
is that we do a lot of things that major museums
will never do.
We are very different.
For example, we do a lot of health things
in our institution.
At one event we had
about 200 women, they were all 55 and older,
not one had ever had a mammogram in their
life.
We had a Nurse Practitioner showing them how
to do a breast examination.
Obviously I was not in the room, but it wasn't
a performance piece, it was health.
We do things like that, because we think it's
important for us to be part of the community.
We
do an annual high school - - prom where kids
from throughout the Midwest, from all backgrounds
come to the institution.
It's the most fun event we do every year.
It's amazing.
It's such a real nice event.
We sign people up to vote at our institution.
We do a lot of things that other museums don't
do.
In fact, I should tell you an event
that happened to me.
I grew up in the tough part of Chicago, so
I've been attacked a lot of times, physically.
It's not fun, but probably the worst attack
I ever got
was I was at museum conference, AM conference
where the four guys were standing around and
were whispering to each other.
I knew they wanted to say something but nobody
had the guts to say it.
Finally somebody says, "You don't act like
a regular museum boss.
You don't.
You don't."
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: I told them, "I know
you're trying to insult me, but thank you.
I don’t want to be like you."
Our goal has always been how do we take care
of the earth as well as everybody, but change
the mindset of what a museum can be.
Why can't museums be accessible?
Why can't they be free?
Why can't we do a lot of things?
Why can't we be a part of the community instead
of a part from
the community.
It's been very key for us, that whole mindset.
I have the board whose allowed me to do a
lot of crazy things, so I'm very grateful
to that.
Boards can be very
interesting places.
[Laughter]
MR.
TORTOLERO: The other thing too that I think
is important is that as part of the comments
I'm making I'm not against the large museums.
I love all museums.
We're not in a situation, none of us - - we
want to create and either/or situation.
We want all museums to thrive.
We want
to create an and situation.
There is problems, for example, just this
situation about fundraising.
I can't tell you how many times I hear a large
museum get this huge grant to do something
about my culture and they are clueless.
They call us and we have to help them.
If I applied for the same grant there's no
way that - - money.
That unfairness is
something that really concerns us a lot.
We have done a lot of shows of travel.
Probably the most famous show we did was a
show called The African Presence in Mexico.
That's a
show that traveled to 11 cities across the
United States.
It is the only exhibition to ever go to an
African American museum, a Latino museum,
a mainstream museum, and also travel south
of the border.
No other museum's ever done that.
Also the word mainstream, we do have to change
that term, because we are the mainstream in
some of these cities,
so that term needs to change as well.
We have to find a better word for that.
What was very interesting about that show,
it was the challenge of doing something like
that.
This was a topic that for a lot of people
in my community was very hard for them to
deal with.
It was very uncomfortable for many people
to deal with.
Probably the greatest
compliment was during the last four months
of the show, 2/3rds of our audience was African
American.
I love Chicago, I'm a big Chicago booster.
We travel all over the
world but we don't travel across the city
of Chicago.
To be able to accomplish that was really a
great honor for us.
The other thing too that our institutions
are always attacked about is the work we're
doing of quality nature.
I have never heard that - - from a large museum.
Why is the quality issue always being asked
of us but not of
them?
It's always - - the second layer, those minor
league kind of museums.
It comes from the powers that be, so that's
a bit disturbing that it happens.
The other thing, too, is that we're always
accused of having an agenda.
Folks, that's true.
We do have an agenda.
We care about our community and we're going
to fight for our community.
Four
years ago we had a show on the crisis about
immigration.
We were very tough on both political parties.
The fact that they'd allow the - - border.
These are shows that we can
do that the large institutions cannot do.
It's very important - - agenda.
When the large museums say they don't have
an agenda it isn't true.
They do have an agenda.
When these large art museums give over their
prime space, to European artists or white
artists, that's not an agenda?
Give me a break.
It is an agenda.
We're just honest about our agenda.
All
museums have an agenda.
- - institution there are three things we
have to worry about.
One is autonomy, more of the institution we
have for people of color are not grassroots
institutions.
They are institutions that are controlled
by cities, or counties, or state, and the
autonomy isn't there to do a lot of things.
That's very scary,
because you need that autonomy.
We have to face tough issues.
The other thing is, of course, funding.
That's never going to go away.
We're always raising money.
I throw people up, I
drop them.
Whatever falls on the floor is mine.
We're always trying to raise money, that never
ends.
The third thing is we are living in very scary
times in this country.
I am so scared of what's going on in this
country.
To spend time out West and south of Arizona
and see how cuckoo those people are, how crazy
those people, it is unbelievable.
I mean,
the fact that they have outlawed in all high
schools, the teaching of my culture is absurd.
You know, John Wayne was not the first cowboy
okay?
It was probably Juan Wayne, Jose Wayne, Philippe
Wayne, but it wasn't John Wayne, okay?
We were the first cowboys, and we did a lot
of things in this country.
So the fact that our history is not being
taught is
really scary, so I do worry about the future
of our institutions in terms of foundations
may one day, your funders may one day say,
you know what?
- - place but now the big boys
and girls can do what you were doing, which
isn't accurate.
What we do is very vital and very key.
I'm very passionate about this, but thank
you for giving me the opportunity.
[Applause]
MS.
BROWN: Thank you.
I'm going to pose a few questions and then
we will open the Q&A up to the audience.
These are four museums that I have
admired for a long time.
I believe that museums that sit in the heart
of their communities and that listen to their
constituents are what I call, call and response
museums.
Yes, they do have the ability to do great
research and great scholarship, but one of
the things that distinguishes them is that
they listen to their constituents, they know
what their
needs are, and having been on the board of
a small community-based museum, your constituents
hold you accountable.
They will walk in, and if something is not
right they will
tell you that it's not right, and they will
expect you to do something about it.
It's a kind of accountability that large museums
don't have.
So the first question that I would raise for
this group has to do with who your audience
is.
We know that most of these institutions were
created because you represent communities
that were
underrepresented and under served in what
are called mainstream museums.
My question is what's your goal for your immediate
constituency and what do you want the world
to know when they come to your museums?
Anyone can start.
MR.
PIJEAUX: I'll jump right in.
We are in the civil rights district in Birmingham,
Alabama.
We are across
the street from 16th Street Baptist Church
where four girls were killed approximately
five years ago, 2013.
Across the street from Kelly Ingram Park where
many of the demonstrations
took place.
We're in the heart of downtown Birmingham.
We will celebrate our 20th anniversary this
year.
That's on the heels of 20 years ago when no
one wanted to support our institution.
Our audience has evolved to a very broad based
audience.
We attract people not only from Birmingham
and the state of Alabama, but literally from
around the world.
If you remember the slide that you saw with
the jail cell, and there was a lady looking
into the jail cell, she was from Sydney, Australia.
That gives you some idea about the audience
that we have.
What do we want people to learn about Birmingham
and the Civil Rights Movement?
Very simply that what happened in Birmingham,
Alabama
nearly 50 years ago continues to have a profound
impact on race relations around the world
as we speak.
Approximately six to eight months ago, and
we had what I will refer to
as the unrest in Egypt, we actually saw a
youngster with a card that said we shall overcome.
Where did that come from with the exception
of Birmingham, Alabama.
That's basically the message.
The city and what happened has a positive
impact on race relations around the world
even today.
MR.
TORTOLERO: One of our challenges
is that we have to deal with so many of the
different kind of people come to our museum.
Half our audience is from outside the community,
and so it's very important for us to make
sure that they have a great experience.
In fact, we see ourselves as kind of cultural
ambassadors to the outside world, from outside
the community.
I think
that's very important for us.
At the same time too, we also deal with many
Mexicans who are coming to a museum for the
first time in their life.
You see them walk in sometimes and
you can see they are like, "Okay, one step
more forward, that's it."
I mean, it's a new experience for them.
I know that sounds strange.
I've been living in the United States practically
all my life, but when I go to a public building
or any new building for the first time I'm
scared, believe it or not, because I expect
something bad could happen.
I
0:52:44.1 know that sounds weird, but I think
they feel the same way.
Even though we're Mexican, it says Mexican
out there, there's still that thing about
do they want me in here?
Is this place really for me?
I think we've done a very good job in this
country of telling some people these places
are not for them.
They feel it, and it's there.
Whenever we see somebody
we just go to them quick and say, "Come on
in.
It's free.
Walk around."
It's very important for us to be good hosts
because they're coming into their house, in
a sense.
We want to make sure they feel as comfortable
as possible.
MS.
BROWN: Thank you.
MS.
TAKEKAWA: I think for the Wing we have sort
of a two-fold.
Everything we do we also feel a responsibility
to increase neighborhood economy which is
a challenge and which is why we're there.
We stayed there.
We do reach
out to other people in the city.
We try to welcome people to our neighborhood.
There are some challenges.
It's urban.
I think since we've expanded that it's been
a big help.
If we can be successful at our museum, we
are programmed so that all the other neighborhood
businesses will see an increase in business.
I do want to say something about some
of the challenges that people have spoken
to today that they're actually challenges
that are universal for the museum industry.
Talking about whether or not your exhibits
are
depressing, and will people come, because
that's not what they go to museums for.
Ethnic history is not the only American history
that's depressing.
There are other topics too.
I think it's more of an artistic question,
but when it's looked at for us, it's looked
at as an ethnic question.
If there's a balance thing, and what is the
story
you want to tell, how do you want to tell
it.
Museums, I think, do a lot with a penny.
I have business background, and I have seen
so many museums in America with little funds.
They really produce.
I do see that a lot of the challenges we talked
to today are important for museums across
the board including the building of your audiences.
What
Konrad Ng talked about, the digital age, and
that people are no longer content with just
spectating.
They are now feeling like they are creating
culture.
That's something
that is a challenge for all museums.
It's exciting.
MS.
SAMHAN: I think that our goal to increase
our audiences is in a couple of different
directions.
One is we estimate that about half of our
visitors are not of Arab descent.
Those usually come from two sectors, one is
the school children because educational tours
from around
Michigan is the largest source of our children's
population who come, and the second one is
hosting multi-cultural events at the museum
because we have a state of the art theater,
and an auditorium, and we do art programs,
and things like that, that we attract a multi-cultural
audience.
It's still from the Southeast Detroit area.
Our biggest challenge is
taking a museum in Detroit outside of Michigan,
which our traveling exhibits are going to
be hopefully our best route to do that.
By taking our exhibits to universities,
libraries, and other museums like this patriots
and peace makers exhibit.
We're hoping to reach a much broader audience
of people would who never set foot in Dearborn.
Our last outreach effort is going to be appealing
to professional associations and other social
and political organizations in our own ethnic
community to have them think
of the museum as a destination for their annual
meetings and to do conferences there, etcetera.
MS.
BROWN: Great, thank you.
If people have questions, why don't you come
to the microphones.
Why don't we start over here?
Oh she can't see me.
Hello?
You, yes introduce yourself please and ask
your question.
FEMALE VOICE 1: I was asked from the man next
to me to ask the question since he's deaf.
So that's why I'll just read the questions.
Do you support the idea of deaf museums?
Deaf people are already seen as cultural and--
MR.
PIJEAUX: I can't hear what you just said.
MS.
BROWN: She's asking if we support the idea
of deaf museums or museums for deaf audiences?
FEMALE VOICE 1: Yes, deaf museums.
Deaf people are already seen as cultural and
linguistic groups.
He
also asks why not do a deaf exhibition in
each museum, like deaf Indian or deaf black
museums?
He's not asking one specific person, so whoever
wants to answer that's awesome.
MS.
BROWN: What I will say is that I think this
year if not next year is the 20th anniversary
of the Americans with Disabilities act.
All of our
museums are supposed to be as completely accessible
as possible.
I do think that this is a nation with a short
memory, and that there was a time when people
were very actively
making sure that there were films with subtitles
and that everything that we did was as accessible
as possible.
I think that we kind of fall behind.
There was also a time when I heard about lawsuits
a lot too, and I think that kept us vigilant.
I think that is a reminder that we can do
better across the board.
Anybody else want to respond
to that?
MR.
TORTOLERO: I think you said it very well.
Mandula [phonetic]?
MANDULA KUMAR [phonetic]: Yes, thank you Claudine.
Mandula Kumar from the Smithsonian Center
for Education and Museum Studies.
I'd like to thank the panel for sharing their
ideas on very critically important issues
to museums and especially specific
cultural museums.
We heard about community responses, involvement.
We heard about attracting audiences.
My question, and I think especially to Beth
from the Arab American museum,
how honest, how truthful are these stories
that you're telling, and how difficult has
it been to engage the average public about
getting to know the truth about the content
and more contemporary burning issues that
must be facing communities and in the Arab
American world?
MS.
SAMHAN: Thank you for that question.
It's always difficult to
assess whether your content is being presented
in a truthful way.
We certainly try to present our permanent
exhibits in a way that covers as many possible
bases about the various immigrant experiences
and what these people brought, and what their
concerns are.
In terms of the more contemporary controversial
issues, the museum doesn't shy away
from those issues, but it is also very aware
that it is a forum for a very diverse community.
For example.
After 9/11 it just hosted a retrospective
ten years after 9/11
about the impact of 9/11 on various communities
in the state of Michigan.
It was done with the support of a Michigan
Foundation.
People from various cities in Michigan came
to support this conference and present data
as well as research and personal stories about
how various communities in Michigan responded
to the impact of 9/11.
It was done in a thoughtful
way, in a scholarly as possible, but also
in a way that not everybody agrees with some
of the opinions, I'm sure, that were expressed
in that conference.
It was an open forum.
It's a very good question and it's very hard
to know if the stories that we're telling
will resonate with everybody that walks in
the museum.
Probably not, like I explained.
There are people, some of my own grandparents
would not consider themselves Arab, and they
maybe wouldn't even come if they were alive
today to that museum, because, "No,
no, no, Arabs are those other people, not
us."
It's so hard to say.
I have embraced it.
I have come as an activist and as someone
who has studied this region.
I have come to embrace that this general story
resonates with me.
It is a large, tense story.
It is a story that embraces as many possible
narratives as we can accept.
It tells the story
about Muslims.
It tells the story about Christians.
It tells the story about people who have no
religious affiliation.
Minorities within the Arab world.
A lot of different aspects of these experiences
and I don't know if we'll ever be sure if
the story is true for everybody.
MS.
BROWN: You know, Mandula, when you ask about
truth, in my head the
question I asked was whose truth?
At some point in the history of our nation
there were stories told about my community
that I absolutely disagreed with from the
perspective
of living in that community, and in some instances
even knowing the people who were being spoken
about.
I do think that the image that comes to mind
for me all the time is a person who went to
art school.
If you're in a figure-drawing class, there's
a person sitting in the middle of the room.
Everybody's sitting around that person in
a
circle drawing, but every drawing is different.
Every perspective is just a bit different.
Your truth from the north and your truth from
the south may not always be the same.
I think that what you try to do is marshal
the facts to the best of your ability.
Then you can reflect how other people are
affected by those facts.
Eduardo?
MR.
DIAZ: I'm Eduardo Diaz from the Latino Center
here at the Smithsonian.
This question really is either for Helen,
Beth, and Carlos primarily.
I think, Helen, during
your comments you were talking about the differentiation
between Arabs and Arab Americans.
I think one of the things that we struggle
with at the Latino Center is this whole issue
of country of origin and community of residence.
The Latino Center is about the U.S. Latino
experience primarily, not about Latin America,
or Mexico, or Puerto Rico per se.
It
is about those people who are from those countries
who now live in this United States for however
long.
Who were here before it became the United
States and the Salvadorian immigrant who got
here two weeks ago to join family here in
D.C. for example.
How do your museums address that issue of
the country of origin where it meets the community
of residence?
MR.
TOROLERO: Well, ours is kind of easy.
We're kind of focused on one culture, one
country of Mexico.
What we do is that we showcase the beauty
and richness of the Mexican culture
wherever it has manifested itself.
We show the artwork of Mexicans on both sides
of the border.
The way I like to - - if E.T. came back and
got married to a girl who was Mexican, had
children, the children grew up to be an artist,
they're half Mexican, their artwork would
be shown at the museum.
We're very inclusive with what we see as Mexican,
but we see it
both sides of the border, not just one side.
MS.
BROWN: I'm going to repeat the question because
I don't think everyone heard it up here.
Eduardo I think that you were asking about
the fact that some of these museums deal with,
and your example was the Latino Center is
concerned with the Latino American experience.
Some of them
deal with the experiences of people from their
places of origin.
You wanted to know how these institutions,
and I think maybe Wing Luke would be a good
example, deal
with that.
MR.
DIAZ: Yeah, how do you negotiate that space
between being from let's say Korea but perhaps
growing up all your life in Korea Town in
Los Angeles for example.
How do these culturally-specific museums negotiate
that relationship, the one between the country
of origin and the community that they now
call L.A.,
Seattle, Dearborn, Chicago, whatever?
MS.
TAKEKAWA: That's a good question.
I think the answer to that has been changing
over the period of time.
Especially for Asians in this country.
Globalization has changed a lot.
Before, it used to be that for instance if
you were a Vietnamese American you didn't
necessarily go back to the home country, or
your
kids that were born here didn't really have
an opportunity to go back.
Now going back and forth and political relations
between the countries, all those things have
changed.
I think from our point of view, we're a community-driven
institution.
We're very oral-history based, which is how
we hope that people who are not Asian in background
would find that they could relate to the story
and find some relevance to themselves.
Because we're community driven, we allow the
committees to determine how relevant
the experience or the history in Asia is.
We did an exhibit on the refugee community,
and it was very important for people from
that background.
They felt that they're representing not just
themselves and their family that came over,
but they represent the people who didn't make
it over.
Those were much more global in nature.
I think for us, we take the
cue from what it is, how people want their
stories to be told.
MS.
BROWN: I'd like to circle back to the original
question about deaf museums.
I wondered if the person
who raised the question would let us know
whether or not he feels that there should
be deaf museums.
The question that I raised, yes, was do you
think there should be deaf museums?
FEMALE VOICE 1: Well, to be honest, I've never
thought about this.
I don't know.
I'm sorry, I don't know this man, so he just
wrote this
question on a paper and I read it.
To think about it, I don't know.
I don't come from America so I can't just
speak about my experience in another country.
In Germany there are some blind museums where
blind people guide other visitors through
the museum and help to figure out the experience
of being blind.
I don't know if stuff like this could exist
for a deaf person as well.
I'm curious right now, so I don't know.
Let's see what he wrote.
I'm sorry I just don't know right now.
It seems like it's fine, I don't know.
MS.
BROWN: Okay, great.
I just don't want to leave any loose ends.
I think it's important to kind of think through
all of the possibilities.
From my own perspective I think I could learn
something from a museum that was about deaf
audiences and for deaf audiences.
I'm open.
If there's a particular advocacy point of
view I
want to know about that as well.
Are there any other questions?
MR.
PIJEAUX: Claudine, I'd like to go back to
the question about truth in museums.
When I arrived at the Birmingham Civil Rights
Institute, one of the concerns that I heard
from the community centered around stories
that had not been told.
Gaps in the history that we portrayed at the
institute.
One of the things that we did to address those
stories was collect oral histories.
When we renovated the facility in 2009, we
included those oral histories in the
renovation of the institute.
So that we did a better job of telling the
entire story.
I think all of us that work at institutions
that chronicle recent history, this concern
about why are you not telling my story.
Fortunately for us at the institute, we had
the benefit of Reverend Freddy - - who lead
the movement, he was still around.
To some extent he
could help us fashion the story of the movement
that we portray in the institute.
FEMALE VOICE 2: Hi.
Just going back to the idea of the deaf museum.
I wonder about having interpreters in museums.
Museums offer many different ways of looking
at history and art.
A lot of it's reading, but there are also
educational programs.
There are also the audio tours.
There could be interpreters in museums to
open it up to all different people.
You could get into issues of American sign
language
versus all the other types of sign language,
but that could be an option.
That could be something that would be really
interesting and very cool also from a hearing
perspective to see interpreters in museums.
MS.
BROWN: One of the things that's in development
right now here at the Smithsonian is an app
for an exhibition for blind people.
What
they're looking for are average people who
have gone through an exhibition who talk about
what they've seen, what they perceive, and
how they responded to the work.
What that has let us know is that a family
could go through a single exhibition and each
family member could have a different app that
begins to introduce them to a different aspect
of the same exhibition so that they can hear
it and experience it from their own point
of view.
The technology really will allow us to begin
to help people to see,
understand, and use our facilities in ways
that they were never able to before.
Yes?
LOUISE SCOTT: Yes, I'm Louise Scott from the
National Museum of African Art.
Concerning the deaf person and a tour, I recently
gave a tour to a group of people who are deaf.
I think it's called the American Association
of Translators came and
signed my tour.
So that's a possibility.
MS.
BROWN: Well that's an excellent idea.
I think that what our issue is, is that we're
just not consistent.
If someone calls us and lets us know that
the group is deaf, then we will have an interpreter.
There's rarely somebody on staff who can be
called if a family shows up
and has that need.
It's an issue that we're going to have to
address with a lot more empathy and consistency.
Thank you.
If there are no more questions I am going
to
conclude this panel.
What I would say to you is I have the privilege
of inviting these wonderful people to be on
this panel because I had a fabulous experience
at each of these museums.
In the case of the Wing Luke Museum in the
early 1990s I went to an American Association
of Museums meeting, and it was one of their
larger meetings.
There were more
than 3,000 people who came.
There were receptions at museums all over
Seattle, and I decided to go to the reception
at the Wing Luke Museum.
That was before it moved into the larger facility.
Two things that I really loved about that
reception were the fact that local people
told me about the exhibition.
The entire exhibition was full of people who
lived in the immediate community who owned
that exhibition with a kind of personal passion
that I have not seen in many places.
The other thing is that they kept running
out of food,
and people kept showing up with new pots of
food.
[Laughter]
MS.
BROWN: The food just got better and better.
I love the fact that a community cared so
much about its guests that there was a pot
of plenty happening at this museum.
It let me know that this was a place that
a community loved, owned, and believed
in.
They actually--
[Audio ends abruptly]
