Can’t attend in person? Register for virtual participation here

The Museum of Chinese in America cordially invites you to an engaging panel discussion on its special exhibition Five Senses of Chinatown, as part of our vibrant MOCA FEST 2024, commemorating the Lunar New Year. This guided conversation will provide an insider’s perspective on the curatorial process and our cross-departmental collaboration, offering a unique understanding of how each element comes together to tell the multisensory stories of Chinatown.

Leading the discussion is Herb Tam, MOCA’s Curator and Director of Exhibitions. Yue Ma, Director of Collections and Research Center, will share her insights into artifact preservation, focusing particularly on the stories behind our Chinatown collections. Lauren Nechamkin, Director of Education, will highlight our educational initiatives and discuss how we bring cultural heritage of Chinatown to life for a young audience. The program will conclude with a behind-the-scenes curator’s tour, offering a glimpse into the heart of this community-oriented exhibition.

Exhibition Overview
Five Senses of Chinatown captures the unique character of Manhattan Chinatown through artwork by students from local schools, historical artifacts from MOCA’s Collection, and interactive sense stations. MOCA staff collaborated with teachers and students from Transfiguration School, MS 131, and the High School of Dual Language and Asian Studies. Together, they created a diverse range of works—drawings, paintings, collage, poetry and digital artwork—which portray Chinatown through sensory associations of characteristic spaces: homes, public parks, street life, businesses, eateries, grocery stores, and bubble tea shops. To link the present with the past, their work will be shown alongside historical photographs and artifacts of Chinatown from MOCA’s Collection. Five Senses of Chinatown is a collective portrait of the neighborhood as expressed through sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings.