Please note that in-person research appointments and onsite access to MOCA’s Collections and Research Center will be paused temporarily from November 2024 to February 2025.
MOCA’s Collections and Research Center, now located at a new state-of-the-art facility at 3 Howard Street, archivally preserves and provides research access to the museum’s vast collection of 85,000+ objects documenting New York Chinatown and Chinese American history.
While archives and conservation staff continue to focus on the work necessary to recover from the damage of a devastating fire to MOCA’s archives, the Collections and Research Center strives to provide robust remote research services and is open to in-person research on a limited basis Mondays-Thursdays 10 am – 5 pm by prior appointment only. For assistance with research-related questions or to request in-person research access to MOCA’s archives, please email MOCA’s Collections Department at collections@mocanyc.org, and include a brief description of your research and any requests of specific collections or materials you would like to view. Collections are available for researchers to access free of charge by appointment. A licensing fee will apply for publication use.
To facilitate research and use of our collections, our staff is constantly updating and expanding our remotely searchable and accessible catalogs of artifacts, photographs, journals, books, documents, and oral histories from MOCA’s extensive collection. Currently, MOCA has digitized around 30% of its collections. The digitized items are available on the following three research platforms. The use of the three allows them to complement one another and present the entirety of our collection.
PastPerfect – Item level database
ArchivesSpace – Finding aids for general overview of the collections
OHMS – Online access to oral histories
