Culture Fiend

Enjoy a Free Historic Hotel Tour at Wing Luke This Saturday

It’s the hidden gem of the International District.

Posted by: Allie Oosta and Laura Dannen on Nov 09, 2011 at 03:45PM 0 Comments

Photo: Lindsay Kennedy Photography

Wing Luke museum admission is free this Saturday—so is this view.

What Free admission to the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, which includes the historic hotel tour.

When Saturday, November 12, 10–5

Why Even if you’re a local, you might have missed the rickety staircase just to the left of the Wing Luke entrance in the same East Kong Yick building. Those creaky boards lead up to the remnants of a 100-year-old migrant hotel that used to be a refuge for Chinese laborers and Asian Pacific American pioneers. It’s like the set of an old western: hardwood everything, narrow hallways, low tin ceilings, rooms with the kind of metal-frame beds suited for military barracks and college dorm rooms. You almost feel like the tenants just stepped out for a minute, considering the wealth of abandoned photos, hairbrushes, steamer trunks, and a too-tiny faded vest and suit jacket, hanging neatly on the back of a chair. It’s a time warp.

Part of the tour stops in a 1901 shop that sold imported goods and tickets to the Blue Funnel Line steamship. These historic spaces are only accessible through the tour—and they come alive thanks to the guides (often a couple in their eighties with lots of great slow-cooking stories to tell).

Who Fans of the Underground Tour will enjoy this trip through time. Recommended for ages six and up.

Where Wing Luke is located in Seattle’s Chinatown–International District at 719 South King St.

How Just print off and fill out your free passes and bring them to Wing Luke this Saturday. The tour lasts about 45 minutes, and we’re told spots fill up quickly, so consider going early.

Looking for a place to eat in the neighborhood afterwards? Try our guide to Seattle’s best Asian restaurants.

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Tags: Wing Luke Museum, Museums, Free Museum

Art After-Hours: Where to Go This First Thursday

Museums are free, galleries stay open late. So…many…choices…

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 03, 2011 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

At Wing Luke: Gene Tagaban, Henare Tahuri and Tawera Tahuri, Ritual of Encounter, 2010, acrylic on wood, 8’ x 15’. Photo and art courtesy of the Evergreen State College Longhouse.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

At Wing Luke: Gene Tagaban, Henare Tahuri and Tawera Tahuri, Ritual of Encounter, 2010, acrylic on wood, 8’ x 15’. Photo and art courtesy of the Evergreen State College Longhouse.

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In this installation, Letters home by Asian immigrants hang in the Welcome Hall of the Wing Luke Museum.

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Decades ago, Chinese elders met around the table in this Family Association Room at the East Kong Yick building.

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Designed by Ming Wong and hand-painted by Neo Chon Tech, Four Malay Stories, 2009. Acrylic emulsion on canvas. 96 × 120 in. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

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Ming Wong, In Love for the Mood, 2009. Three-channel video installation. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

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Ming Wong, Life of Imitation, 2009. Two-channel video installation. Image courtesy Singapore Art Museum Collection/Frye Art Museum.

This First Thursday, we’re celebrating Lunar New Year by starting at the Wing Luke Museum. Their latest exhibit, Cultural Confluence, tells the story of urbanites of mixed Asian-Native American descent and what it means to be “native” when so many live off the reservation. Stop in for the video tribute to woodcarver John T. Williams.

But it’s the historic hotel tour that’s the hidden gem here. Even if you’re a local, you might have missed the rickety staircase just to the left of the Wing Luke entrance in the same East Kong Yick building. Those creaky boards lead up to the remnants of a 100-year-old migrant hotel that used to be a second home for Chinese laborers. It’s like the set of an old western: hardwood everything, narrow hallways, low tin ceilings, rooms with the kind of metal-frame beds suited for military barracks and college dorm rooms. You almost feel like the tenants just stepped out for a minute, considering the wealth of abandoned photos, hairbrushes, steamer trunks, and a too-tiny faded vest and suit jacket, hanging neatly on the back of a chair. It’s a time warp in here.

There’s one room dedicated to Family Association meetings, with an long oaken table fit for a banquet hall, another room just for mahjong. And though we didn’t get to experience this, we hear that a couple in their eighties leads the tour and has lots of great slow-cooking stories to tell. For fans of the Underground Tour, this is a nerdy slice of paradise.

The tours are $8.95-$12.95 for 45 minutes, and you have to step out earlier in the day to catch them (they only run 10:30-3:30). But now that you’re out, you might as well swing by the Frye Art Museum on First Hill, where Singaporean artist Ming Wong has put together a very impressive collection of Southeast Asian movie memorabilia and new work exploring identity in its many forms—language, race, gender, nationality—through the lens of Singaporean cinema of the 1950s and ’60s. “The glory days of national cinema,” as he calls it. Though it’s easy to miss, check the hallway to the right of the exhibit for a five-minute documentary on the making of the exhibit’s vibrant billboards by Singapore’s last remaining billboard artist, Neo Chon Teck.

View the slideshow above for a glimpse of everything.

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Tags: Visual Art, frye art museum, First Thursday, Wing Luke Museum, Wing Luke Museum, Free Stuff, Chinese New Year

Met Pick: Roger Shimomura Lecture

The local pop art icon covers 40 years of work in 60 minutes. That’s skill.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Mar 18, 2010 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Roger Shimomura, Astro Boy, 2004, acrylic on canvas, 36 × 48 inches, courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery.

Last chance to get tickets to tonight’s talk at Wing Luke Museum by local artist Roger Shimomura, who satirizes Asian stereotypes and American culture in his pop art-style paintings. Over the last 40 years, Shimomura, a third-generation Japanese American and Seattle native, has developed a style that can best be described as cathartic, tackling personal issues—the internment of his family during World War II, and diary entries by his grandmother—with cartoon imagery in bright, bold acrylics. He mocks Asian stereotypes from the 1940s by exaggerating the eyes (extra long) and skin tone (jaundice yellow) of his subjects, and often layers a self-portrait over cartoon characters (see Astro Boy, above, a send-up of the 1950s Japanese manga superhero). “I was strangely attracted to the idea of creating art out of something that I hate,” he said at the October opening of his exhibit at Wing Luke: Yellow Terror: The Collections and Paintings of Roger Shimomura.

But it’s not all scathing. Walt Disney’s Mickey and Minnie make an appearance in his paintings; so does Dr Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, each emblematic of Shimomura’s childhood in America, and sharing canvas space with a representative of his heritage. Find out how Shimomura’s work was received when he lived in the heart of America—teaching at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, from 1969 till 2004. The lecture starts at 7pm. Call 206-623-5124 to purchase tickets ($15).

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Tags: Visual Art, Roger Shimomura, Wing Luke Museum,