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Exhibition Reviews
"The Chinese American Experience in Minnesota." Minnesota Historical Society, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55102.
Temporary exhibition. Feb. 23–June 1, 2003. 500 sq. ft., with additional art gallery. Brian Horrigan and Sherri Gebert Fuller, co-curators; Terry Scheller, designer; Dan Beck, media production; Garrick Willhite, Web designer.
Chinese in Minnesota. By Sherri Gebert Fuller. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2004. 112 pp. $13.95, ISBN 0-8735-1470-X.)
Internet: description of exhibition, video clip, and additional links <http://www.mnhs.org/events/ChineseAmerican/> (Dec. 8, 2003).
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| During the 1870s and 1880s, while anti-Chinese riots broke out in western states, a little-noticed group of Chinese immigrants headed to the Midwest. By the late 1880s, more than one hundred Chinese, mostly men, had settled in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, and other smaller cities and towns in the state of Minnesota. Today, the Chinese community in Minnesota comprises more than eighteen thousand people. The success of these immigrants and their descendants is the focus of the small but rich Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) exhibition titled "The Chinese American Experience in Minnesota." As the main label of the exhibit emphasizes, "despite harsh immigration restrictions and job discrimination that persisted well into the twentieth century, the Chinese community in Minnesota ... remains a vital force throughout the state." Timed to coincide with the recent debut of Becoming American: The Chinese Experience, a documentary produced by Bill Moyers, the MHS exhibit brings to life a little-known chapter in both Asian American and Minnesota history. The timing of the exhibit is excellent. While Minnesota is best known for its rich European, especially Norwegian, heritage, in recent years the state has attracted a record number of new immigrants and refugees from Asia, Africa, and Mexico. "The Chinese American Experience in Minnesota" provides a new window through which to view the state's European immigrant heritage as well as its new immigrant future. |
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The exhibition is divided into two main sections of graphic panels and three object cases. Visitors first view a main label introducing the exhibition and a television monitor that plays a ten-minute clip of the Becoming American documentary. Section 1 focuses on the early migration of Chinese to Minnesota in the nineteenth century and the communities and organizations that they founded from then until after World War II. Seeking job opportunities and freedom from the anti-Chinese sentiment in western states, Chinese chose to come to Minnesota. As the exhibit explains, this migration was significant. At a time when the national population of Chinese in the United States was declining—due in large part to the success of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the number of Chinese in Minnesota increased. As one 1876 editorial in the St. Paul Pioneer Press indicates, the Chinese faced much less organized opposition in Minnesota than in the Far West. "The people of St. Paul can't see why the Californians should fret so much about the Chinese," the editorial explained. "In this city, they conduct themselves in the most unexceptional manner.... Give the Orientals a chance." The small community of Chinese in Minnesota, however, still faced the same racial barriers in employment that the California-based Chinese faced. Through the early 1900s, the vast majority of Chinese worked in the segregated Chinese American economic niches of laundries, restaurants, or stores. |
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