Seattle's Child Magazine: Visit the 'New' Wing Luke

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PHOTO BY JANICE LOVELACE. (click to enlarge)

A wind chime chandelier welcomes visitors at the entrance of the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

COURTESY OF WING LUKE ASIAN MUSEUM (click to enlarge)

The “Letter Cloud” art installation by Erin Shie Palmer graces the museum’s west lightwell.

Seattle's Child Calendar Editor

Published: Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Visit the 'New' Wing Luke

By Janice Lovelace

A visit to the “new” Wing Luke Asian Museum is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon and learn about the historic and modern-day Asian-American community in the Puget Sound area.

The museum, named after Seattle’s first Asian-American City Councilman, reopened May 31 in the International District’s renovated East Kong Yick building. The expanded space incorporates much of the previous exhibits and adds art galleries, a separate children’s area, a larger community room and a theater.

First built in 1910, with stores on the street level and boarding rooms for Asian laborers on the top floors, the old hotel has been modernized for exhibit and community space while maintaining a portion of the historic site.

An hour-long docent-led “immersion” tour, offered twice daily, takes visitors to the “old” portion of the building (children must be over 5). An import-export storeroom has been set up as it would have looked in the early 20th century. You can see it through a window as you climb the original wooden steps toward the old boarding rooms.

Walk along the hallways to see several refurnished rooms, set up with artifacts from their respective cultures to represent the hotel manager’s space and three renters: a Filipino cannery worker, a Chinese railroad worker and a Japanese farm worker.

Two family association meeting areas also have been restored, complete with the original tin ceilings in a communal dining area. The Family Associations were for new immigrants with the same last name. Their goal was to help the immigrants settle in the area and find a place to live and work as well as to make social contacts. The Luke family association was one of them, although it is not known if Wing Luke’s family ever joined this association.

The Chinese first came to Washington in 1860 with the arrival of Chin Chun Hock. Most Chinese came to work on the railroad, mines and at the waterfront in canneries. They lived in hotels, like the Kong Yick building, as they migrated from job to job.

After the 1880 Chinese Exclusion Act, which limited Chinese immigration, more Japanese, Filipinos and Koreans came to the area. The neighborhood became home to growing families as the single men sent back to home countries for brides.

The new part of the museum features a Welcome Hall, an atrium space with stairs leading up to permanent exhibits. A large, colorful wind-chime chandelier with bells and colorful faces hangs overhead when you enter. Children will enjoy picking up a wooden paddle underneath it to lightly touch the chimes.

Beyond the entrance on the main floor, visitors will find the marketplace, a small theater, the community hall and a space for rotating special exhibits. The rotating exhibit space will open in October with an exhibit on Native Hawaiians. The 50-seat theater features a beautiful rescued Japanese scrim (lightweight transparent curtain) used for painted advertisements in an early 20th century theater.

The community hall, a large gathering space for special events, will host Family Days at the Wing programs every third Saturday of the month. A mixed media mural covering one wall portrays a boat and water representing one of the museum’s key themes: the voyage from Asia to North America.

On the second level is the heart of the museum. An art exhibit in the light well welcomes you to the space. The sound of water paired with strips of white paper floating from the ceiling – representing letters between families – gives visitors a chance to imagine an immigrant’s journey across the ocean.

The first collection in an art gallery with rotating exhibits features artist George Tsutakawa and focuses on his work on fountains. Beyond this gallery is a youth art exhibit that features paintings by a group of middle schoolers called Teens Way. Work from Youth Can, a group of high schoolers, will go on display later this summer. The teens have varied artwork, mostly focused on cultural experiences.

Close by, there’s a space dedicated to child-friendly exhibits, as well as a place to draw and create art. The KidPlace Gallery’s first exhibit is set for August and will focus on Asian dance. In January, there will be workshops on the Lunar New Year.

Honoring Our Journey is the core exhibit space featuring artifacts from home countries, stories of immigration, American work experiences, and a multimedia exhibit on the community today.

A series of smaller spaces focus on four permanent Asian groups and a fifth is a rotating exhibit area. A particularly moving exhibit – but one that is probably too intense for young children – focuses on Cambodia and includes a memorial of the “killing fields,” where at least 1.7 million Cambodians died from disease, overwork, starvation or execution during the Khmer Rouge’s regime in the late 1970s. September’s first special exhibit will be on mixed races and ethnicities.

Janice Lovelace is a Bothell freelance writer and child psychologist.