MoCA

This summer, I’m doing an internship with the Weatherhead Institute, which is the East Asian studies department here at the college. More specifically, I’m working for a group within the institute called ExEAS, which stands for ‘Expanding East Asian Studies’. The work has been pretty standard so far (data analysis, random tasks, etc), but I wasn’t looking for something terribly challenging, and I’ve met some interesting people there.
On Friday our boss Heidi took us to MoCA, which stands for Museum of the Chinese in America. The museum is a kind of history of the Chinese experience here in America starting back around the mid 1800s. They also had a fairly extensive slideshow about the history of Chinatown here in NYC. Although the characteristics of the neighborhood have changed significantly and are much improved from 150 years ago, the area still serves for many as a kind of gateway for immigration into the country. Men & women from poorer families will come to Chinatown to begin working here, sometimes sending money back home and often eventually moving out to different parts of the country, and into better jobs.
One piece of history in particular that I didn’t know about was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, which severely limited Chinese immigration and prevented Chinese from becoming US citizens. The reasons for its passage were various, but mostly it seems to have stemmed from the same type of knee-jerk racism that has met a number of immigrant groups coming to this country. The Exclusion Act made life & times for the Chinese in this country difficult, and it wasn’t repealed until 1943 during WWII when China and the US were allies.
I want to particularly thank the museum for letting me take pictures of their exhibitions while I was there. The museum actually let us in for a private tour an hour before they normally open since we were from the Institute, but photography is prohibited. When I told the guy at the desk that I wanted pictures for my blog so that I could share it with people back home, he actually went and asked the managers if they’d make an exception for me, which they did as long as I didn’t use the flash. I took a number of really great & interesting shots; this one I felt represented the museum the best. I wouldn’t have been able to take them normally, and I am grateful to the museum for their generosity.

Weatherhead Institute
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/

ExEAS
http://www.exeas.org/

MoCA
http://www.moca-nyc.org/MoCA/content.asp