Seventeenth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum

Abstract

People of Asian descent make up the fastest growing racial group in the United States. Their inclusion in the Smithsonian Institution—the country’s premier museum enterprise—dates back to the 1990s. This paper explores the evolution of the Smithosnian’s Asian American and Pacific Islander program from its inception as the Asian Pacific American National Advisory Group in 1997 to its current form as the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. I first situate the Smithsonian within the context of local historical societies and museums that collected and interpreted the histories and cultures of various Asian communities in the United States beginning in the 1960s. The existence of national- and local-level museums interacted to provide a multiplicity of perspectives. However, they also perpetuated metropolitan-peripheral hierarchies, which were complicated by the fact that the city of Washington, D.C. itself was (and remains) relatively peripheral in the geography of Asian immigration to the United States. Next, I interrogate how a centralized institution navigated its responsibility to represent a diverse and multiethnic coalition. By examining funding structures, staffing, and programming, I argue that the museum faced the paradoxical challenge of bringing a socially marginalized group into the mainstream without simultaneously marginalizing segments of that group. Drawing from museum studies, Asian American history, and critical ethnic studies, this paper offers insights that can guide the next generation of the Smithsonian’s engagement with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through the development of the proposed National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture.