CBS-5: “Documents Lost and Found” – Linda Yee
Asian-American immigration documents that were headed for destruction will have a permanent home at the National Archives in San Bruno. These documents are interpreted through artworks by their descendants, now on display at the Chinese Historical Society of America. Features artwork by Remnants artists Lenora Lee and Cynthia Tom, with interviews of Executive Director Sue Lee and Lenora Lee.

Wells Fargo Salutes Chinese Historical Society of America

Link to video on Vimeo >

Photos from April 12, 2012 Opening Reception >

Photos from April 14, 2012: “Passages” by Lenora Lee Dance >

Press Coverage of Remnants:

CBS-5: Documents Lost & Found by Linda Yee (aired May 9, 2012)
view the segment at chsa.org >

Nancy Ewart, (2012 April 20), Examiner.com: “Weekend Picks. Theophilus Brown, Andrea Schwartz, Chinese Historical Society”

Stephanie Wright Hession (2012 April 12), San Francisco Chronicle: “Artist Cynthia Tom’s journey to find her past,” 

World Journal, ”華人歷史學會-展出華裔「遺風」”

World Journal, “Lenora-Lee舞出祖母移民史”

An official press conference to unveil the building wrap will be held on Friday, March 16, 2012.

Below is the official press release from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) regarding the project.

Central Subway Project Moves Forward on Chinatown Station Property and Contract

SFMTA has acquired station property and will begin work to protect, beautify it until station construction begins

San Francisco—The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which manages transportation in the City, today announced that the Agency has completed the acquisition of the property that will be the future home of the Central Subway’s Chinatown Station. Starting today, the property, located at 933-949 Stockton Street, will be secured, signage will be removed and a decorative vinyl wrap will be applied along Stockton and Washington streets.

The vinyl wrap will feature renderings of the future Chinatown Station design, a Chinese mural provided by the Chinese Historical Society of America and artwork provided by students from the Chinatown YMCA. The wrap will remain in place until the building is demolished later this year to protect the vacant building from vandalism and enhance its appearance.

“The Central Subway project is moving ahead and promises to enhance San Francisco’s transportation system and improve the quality of life for its residents,” said Mayor Edwin M. Lee. “With strong federal, state, local and community support, this project will create jobs, invest in San Francisco’s future, and strength the connections of our City’s neighborhoods and communities.”

“This progress for the Chinatown Station is a visible sign that the Central Subway is moving from the drawing board to reality,” said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who recently sponsored legislation that allows construction of the station to proceed. “The Central Subway will help San Francisco fulfill its promise of being a Transit First City by providing a much-needed light rail connection between established neighborhoods like Chinatown and new ones like Mission Bay.”

The Central Subway Project has contracted with Ferrari Color, a local, registered city vendor, to install the wrap. Installation of the wrap, as well as other work to secure the building and prepare it for demolition, will begin Feb. 24 and continue through mid-March. While this work is in progress, the sidewalks on the southwest corner of Stockton and Washington streets will be blocked off to foot traffic. A temporary walkway will be installed to ensure pedestrian safety.

“This building wrap is a very visible symbol of this important project moving forward,” said Ed Reiskin, the SFMTA’s Director of Transportation. “When the Central Subway is complete, the Chinatown Station will help improve public transportation in this densely populated area of San Francisco. We are committed to minimizing construction-related inconveniences, informing the public about our progress and keeping pedestrians and the community safe.”

While completing the acquisition of the building, the SFMTA aided in the relocation of 19 residential households and eight commercial businesses. All of the residential tenants have moved to new residences, including four households that have purchased homes. The eight commercial tenants have been relocated and six businesses have been relocated nearby.

The final design of the Chinatown Station has been completed, and the SFMTA plans to advertise the contract for constructing the station by the end of February.

About the Central Subway Project

The Central Subway Project will extend the T Third Line from the 4th Street Caltrain Station to Chinatown, providing a direct, rapid transit link from the Bayshore and Mission Bay areas to SoMa and downtown. Four new stations will be built along the 1.7-mile Central Subway Project alignment – an above-ground station at 4th and Brannan streets and three underground stations at Moscone Center, Union Square and Chinatown.

The Central Subway Project is the second phase of the SFMTA’s Third Street Light Rail Transit Project. The first segment of the T Third Line began revenue service in April 2007, restoring light rail service to a high transit-ridership area of San Francisco for the first time in 50 years.

Revenue service on the Central Subway is expected to begin in 2019.

For construction updates and project information, please visit centralsubwaysf.com.

Special thanks to the following volunteers and members, who were part of the contingent representing CHSA aboard the Wells Fargo float: Marty Valentine, Kim DeVillier, Pansy Lam, William Tong, Mina Fung, Kristina Nagales, Gus Beltran, Mark Nagales, and Amy Lam

Read our Twitter feed archive of the Parade at twitter.com/chsamuseum >

Video of the Wells Fargo float in the parade:

Links to photo albums:

Album at Facebook.com/chsamuseum >

Facebook album by CHSA member Pansy Lam >

The CHSA Museum will co-present two programs, “Saving Face” and “Scenes from a Memoir with Cherylene Lee” at the 2012 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Both programs highlight different aspects of the Chinese American experience.

Scenes from a Memoir with Cherylene Lee
March 11, 2012, 6pm
Pacific Film Archive Theatre
Pacific Film Archive Theater 2575 Bancroft Way (Between College and Telegraph streets)
Berkeley
http://festival.caamedia.org/30/guide/program/scenes-from-a-memoir-with-cherylene-lee/
Best known for performing in Flower Drum Song and a Rat Pack-era Vegas revue with her sister Virginia, the unsung Asian American pioneer Cherylene Lee will join us to read from her fascinating new memoir on life in show business, Just Like Really, and reminisce with her sister and film historian Stephen Gong.

Saving Face
March 12, 2012, 6pm
SF Film Society Cinema at New People
SF Film Society 1746 Post St (at Webster), San Francisco
(Located inside the NEW PEOPLE center)
http://festival.caamedia.org/30/guide/program/saving-face/

Join the filmmakers and cast of the landmark Asian American romantic comedy Saving Face at this special reunion screening!! Joan Chen, Michelle Krusiec, and Lynn Chen star in this classic about a mother and her daughter trying to live, love, and “save face” amidst a judging community.

Each Jake Lee painting showcases specific aspects and milestones in early Chinese American history, including scenes of San Francisco’s Chinatown, railroad-building in the Sierra Nevadas, Sonoma wine country, cigar & lantern factories, and the 1888 champion Chinese fire-hose team of Deadwood, South Dakota.

Come view first-hand these stunning & significant landscapes of our history!

News & Press

View the latest press coverage for Finding Jake Lee

Catalog for Finding Jake Lee

The official catalog for Finding Jake Lee is now available
at the CHSA Museum Store for $7.

This 32-page catalog features prints of all of the paintings in the show and historic photographs in full color. Also featured in the catalog are exclusive essays from Gordon H. Chang (Professor of History at Stanford University), Mark Dean Johnson (Professor of Art at San Francisco State University), Jerry Lee (nephew of artist Jake Lee), Sue Lee (Executive Director of CHSA), and Grace Young (award-winning author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge.

Read an excerpt from the catalog online here!
Jake Lee and Chinese American History by Gordon H. Chang

For more information about purchasing a catalog, please contact CHSA.

Opening April 12, 2012

In the Year of the Dragon, 2012, the Chinese Historical Society of America will revitalize its museum, giving its history exhibits an infusion of art. CHSA has reached out to its artistic community to create works that interpret and respond to the themes of its history galleries. The first art installations will appear in the museum in April, marked by an opening reception on Thursday, April 12.

Five artists are participating in the spring installation: Nancy Hom, Michael Jang, Lenora Lee, Cynthia Tom and Flo Oy Wong. Another group of artists’ works will be installed in September. With this creative approach to its exhibition program, CHSA hopes to invent a new experience for its visitors, bringing a deeper understanding of the Chinese American experience. The selected work for the spring installation focuses on personal narrative, memory and family – concepts that characterize Chinese America.

Among this group of artwork, the centerpiece will be a site-specific installation of the set from the performance “Passages” by Lenora Lee Dance. A powerful portrayal of the journey endured by Lee’s grandmother through Angel Island and into American life, “Passages” presents a memorable narrative through stunning visuals. Works by the other artists will further explore themes of family and remembrance using a range of artistic expression, bearing unique witness to Chinese American history.

Exhibition curated by exhibition designer Gordon Chun

FEATURING:
Nancy Hom
Michael Jang
Lenora Lee
Cynthia Tom
Flo Oy Wong

OPENING RECEPTION:
April 12, 2012 – 6pm

“PASSAGES” BY LENORA LEE DANCE PERFORMANCE:
April 14, 2012 – 1pm

ARTISTS Q&A PANEL:
June 2, 2012 – 1pm

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Nancy Hom

Nancy Hom is an artist, writer, curator, and arts consultant with over 37 years of experience in the non-profit arts field. Born in Toisan, China, she came to the United States when she was five years old. She grew up in New York City. After graduating from Pratt Institute, she moved to San Francisco in 1974 and initiated ground-breaking projects for several non-profit arts organizations, most notably Kearny Street Workshop.

Known for her silkscreen artwork, she has created numerous images for community events, political and social causes. She has also been a graphic designer and children’s book illustrator, as well as a published writer. She now works in mixed media, executing digital posters and large sculpture installations.

Her work has been documented in several publications and her art has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including the de Young Museum and Stanford. Her awards include the Gerbode Fellowship (1998) and KQED Local Hero Award (2003). She is currently a curator and organizational development consultant for several non-profit arts organizations in the Bay Area.

For more information, visit www.nancyhomarts.com

Michael Jang

“For three decades, Michael Jang has earned his keep making photographic portraits of prominent San Franciscans, regular Joes and Silicon Valley big shots. But all the while he’s been taking other pictures for the sheer pleasure of it: punk rockers, cowboys, gang members, Castro’s Cuba, baptisms and barbershops in Hunters Point, old abandoned Idaho houses and his own family….

Jang describes the images as “an often humorous look into the life of an Asian family trying to assimilate into the American mainstream of the ’70s.” He wasn’t thinking that when he took them. It was only in retrospect, looking at them 35 years later, that he saw these pictures in a larger social and historical context.”

Read More: Hamlin, Jesse (2008 November 10). Michael Jang: Family snapshots become fine art. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/10/DDGG13N1SB.DTL&ao=all

www.michaeljang.com

Lenora Lee

Lenora Lee is a dancer, choreographer and artistic director for the past fourteen years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Her training is diverse, with a BA in Dance: Performance and Choreography from UCLA, and experiences as a taiko (Japanese drumming) performer with the celebrated San Francisco ensemble Genryu Arts (2001-2004), in karate (Enshin Karate, South San Francisco Dojo 2009 – present), and Chinese forms (Kei Lun Martial Arts 2009 – present). She has pursued private study in dance composition, contact improvisation, Afro-Brazilian Dance, ballet, modern dance and other forms as well. As such her works have integrated these various approaches to tell stories that shed light on social issues and give voice to experiences of Asian American communities. Lenora is also an experienced arts administrator, having served as Managing Director of Asian American Dance Performances (AADP) and is currently Project Manager for the presenting organization Asian Improv aRts.

In the past two years, however, she has pursued the realization of large-scale interdisciplinary works integrating dance, media design, martial arts, music, and text that share the still largely untold story of how Chinese struggled to immigrate to America and built a viable community under the extremely hostile conditions of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act only repealed in 1943.  www.LenoraLeeDance.com

Olivia Ting is interested in the role of digital technology in the fabric of contemporary lives and how our perception of recorded media (film, photography, audio) as “reality” has shifted as technology becomes more ingrained and “invisible” in our daily functions.

Formally trained as a graphic designer, Olivia worked in branding in New York City before finding that story-telling through images and videos in three-dimensional space suits her calling far more. Returning to San Francisco, she collaborated with dancer/choreographer Lenora Lee to create video collages of stills and moving images to be projected into performance spaces with live dancers. She has made experimental films exploring the dreamlike landscapes of the subconscious that has a way of linking together crucial truths that do not reveal themselves easily in the waking life.

Olivia has done design work for San Francisco Dance Center, San Francisco Performances, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Children Discovery Museum of San Jose. She is currently working on commissioned video projection pieces slated as permanent exhibit of Oakland Museum of California’s Natural History Gallery, under renovation to be opened October 2012. www.olivetinge.com

Cynthia Tom

Cynthia Tom is a working artist and a 3rd generation Cantonese native of San Francisco. Her work, sometimes referred to as Cultural Surrealism, is often feminist in scope, intense in color and often fanciful in execution. She is referenced in 2 academic art publications and her work has been seen at the de Young Museum, Legion of Honor and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She lectures at Universities and just about anywhere people want to know about Cynthia’s work and her themes and about Asian American women in the arts. She is currently the board president of AAWAA, Asian American Women Artists Association, a member of the International Museum of Women and the National Women’s Caucus for the Arts.
www.cynthiatom.com

Flo Oy Wong

Flo Oy Wong, a Sunnyvale, California-based mixed media installation artist, is a visual storyteller who began her career at the age of forty.  Born and raised in Oakland California’s Chinatown, she has received numerous awards for her narrative work.

Flo has exhibited widely on a regional, national, and international basis.  In California, she has shown at the de Young Memorial Museum, the Angel Island Immigration Station, the Oakland Museum, the Euphrat Museum of Art, the 40 Acres Art Gallery (Sacramento), the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, and the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles).

On a national level, Flo has exhibited in New York at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, the Ethan Cohen Gallery, and the Flomenhaft Gallery. She is represented by the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York.

A co-founder of the Northern California-based Asian American Women Artists Association, Flo also served as a national board member for the Women’s Caucus for Art, and has served on the boards of the Arts Council Silicon Valley, the Euphrat Museum of Art, the Asian Heritage Council, and the Asian Americans for Community Involvement.

Flo Oy Wong is currently working on a 2013 75th birthday project entitled 75 x 75 x 75: A Slice of Life, which will feature a collaboration with the African American jazz artist Marcus Shelby and the Rooftop Alternative K – 8 School of San Francisco. That collaboration will culminate in an exhibit at the San Francisco-based Luggage Store Gallery in October.

www.flo-oy-wongartist.com

Special thanks to our sponsors:
Cultural Equity Grants of the SF Arts Commission

Candelaria Fund

What: Part-time internships with Public Programs at the CHSA Museum.
Learn how to organize and hold successful events!

When: February – May 2012

Where: 965 Clay St. in San Francisco Chinatown

How: 10-15 hours per week, paid and unpaid positions available

Contact: Nolan Chow, 415.391.1188 x101 or email: info@chsa.org