The Asian Art Museum celebrates, preserves, and promotes Asian and Asian-American art and cultures for local and global audiences. The museum provides a dynamic forum for exchanging ideas, inviting collaboration, and fueling imagination to deepen understanding and empathy among people of all backgrounds.
At Weaving Stories, you’ll have a vibrant encounter with one of the oldest and most intimate forms of art. From birth to death, we are swaddled, wrapped, or shrouded in cloth. Textiles not only protect and adorn our homes, our sacred spaces, and our bodies but also communicate identity, status, and faith.
This exhibition brings together nearly 45 outstanding examples of textiles from dozens of communities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, most dating to the 19th and 20th centuries — the vast majority of which have never been exhibited before — to explore how fabrics were woven into the daily lives of the peoples of Southeast Asia. Fascinating archival photographs and multimedia displays illustrate how these textiles were made and used.
Seeing Gender is the museum’s first exhibition to explore the collection through the lens of gender. “Gender and sexuality are so central to conversations our society is having today, especially in the Bay Area. With its diverse holdings, the museum can make an important contribution to that dialogue,” explain the curators, Maya Hara, Shinhwa Koo, Joanna Lee, and Megan Merritt.
These four emerging curators have placed artworks from disparate cultures and periods side by side to show how gender — whether fluid or fixed, divine or sensual, subversive or orthodox — is constructed, performed, and depicted throughout Asian art in provocative and inspiring ways.
Travel through Kolkata and Hong Kong with contemporary works from the collection that explore the modern city as both a personal and political landscape.
The inaugural Hambrecht Contemporary Gallery installation, Memento, includes two works that speak to contemporary global issues of urbanization and political uncertainty.
Google Arts & Culture: Explore the history, arts, and culture of Asian American and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
From our establishment in 1997 as an initiative critical to the mission of the Smithsonian until today, the vision for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has been to enrich the American Story with the voices of Asian Pacific Americans.
The groundbreaking exhibition We Are Bruce Lee: Under the Sky, One Family represents the long-awaited homecoming of San Francisco Chinatown’s native son, a legendary figure who was born in Chinatown’s own Chinese Hospital in 1940.
This multimedia collaboration between the Bruce Lee Foundation, top collectors of Bruce Lee memorabilia, and a team of artistic innovators showcases state-of-the-art engagement to magnify the vision and values of a Chinese American icon who grew into an international superstar, along the way transcending race, geography, and culture.
The pineapple was introduced to the Philippines from the Americas sometime in the sixteenth century. Local inhabitants already had a long tradition of weaving fabric from plant fibers. Light and airy, piña fabric was perfectly suitable to the tropical climate and lent itself to intricate embroidery. Piña handwork quickly matched and often surpassed the most intricate laces popular in Spain and France at the time. It was made into traditional men’s shirts, or barong tagalogs, and women’s María Clara ensembles, which consisted of a blouse or camisa with bell-shaped sleeves, a pañueloor shawl, and a long skirt or saya. Piña was also made into table linens, handkerchiefs, and other accessory items. This exhibition features a selection of nineteenth-century piña from Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles that illustrates the fine workmanship of early artisans. It also includes modern piña garments made by Filipino fashion designer Anthony Cruz Legarda.
APICC is excited to kick off the 25th Annual United States of Asian America Festival with this year’s visual art exhibition, Grow Our Souls.
Inspired by Grace Lee Boggs, Grow Our Souls showcases twelve artists who are reimagining labor in an era of climate change and late-stage capitalism. From yoga mat paintings celebrating Black and Brown humanity to seed installations speculating sustainable food futures, artists present sumptuous and abundant possibilities while illuminating industry practices that maintain labor inequities.
Unveiled on April 27, 2022
706 Jackson Street, San Francisco, CA 94133
Over the course of a year-long process, Chinese Culture Center (CCC) in collaboration with Wells Fargo Foundation welcomed students of all ages to submit inspirational figures from history or their personal lives to be depicted on an exciting and timely public mural. With a final selection from a community panel of experts, this project fills narratives missing from mainstream curriculum and public history. This project provided the community a platform to share, uplift, and celebrate important AAPI and community stories and voices.
This exhibit highlights the ordinary people who fought for their rights and in doing so helped shape a new world for Chinese Americans in San Francisco and in the rest of the country.
May 1 – May 31, Angel Island Immigration Station
The history of the former US Immigration Station at Angel Island is directly linked to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The passage of this law marked the first time in our nation’s history that a specific country was singled out. The law prohibited Chinese laborers from entering the US and barred the Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens. In the decades that followed, additional exclusionary immigration laws and policies were passed that impacted most countries from Asia and the Pacific.
May 6, 2022 marks 140 years since the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. AIISF’s Lighting the Darkness exhibition is a solemn reminder of the many lives, families, and communities who were impacted by this and similar laws. It also pays tribute to the strengths and ongoing contributions of immigrants then and now.
Jan 20 – Dec 17, Chinese Culture Center, 750 Kearny St, 3rd FloorSan Francisco, California, 94108
Cathy Lu exhibition – Chinese American ceramic artist solo exhibition, as a part of Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco’s XianRui (Fresh and Sharp) series to uplift artists of Asian heritage.
May 2022 (Thur. – Sat. 11-4 pm), 41 Ross Alley, San Francisco, CA 94108
41 Ross Residency artist Heesoo Kwon recognizes the neighborhood as a universe of converging connections and relationships.
[instagram-feed feed=1]
This is the official celebration of Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month for the City and County of San Francisco.
© Copyright · APA Heritage Foundation
Designed by Thomas Li, Made in San Francisco, CA
