Before checking out Wing Luke Museum's new Bruce Lee exhibit—Do You Know Bruce?—visitors must enter the dragon. The mythical beast wraps its painted body up the wall and extends to be etched on the glass above the exhibit’s doors. The dragon serves as a welcoming host and an indicator of the stylistic display that awaits.

Do You Know Bruce?, the second museum exhibit dedicated to Bruce Lee (the other is in Hong Kong), will run for three years at Wing Luke with new objects on display and new themes being touched upon each year. In its current incarnation, the exhibit focuses on his early days in Seattle and rise to fame; it's an origin story of sorts. (Future years will investigate his role in breaking stereotypes and his ability to act as a unifying catalyst across cultures worldwide.) But as currently presented, Do You Know Bruce? feels more of a quick glimpse at Lee's life rather than a substantive exploration of it.

As the entryway dragon might suggest, Do You Know Bruce?'s presentation is top notch. A striking red and white facade with Lee’s mug and the introductory description greets patrons and houses a small tunnel plastered with over a hundred magazine covers featuring Lee. Just to the right of the entrance, a collection of items left at his Lake View Cemetery grave (military dog tags, stuffed animals, a dream catcher, an Iron Maiden T-shirt, etc.) and an accompanying video interviewing those who’ve traveled from far and wide to pay their respects illustrates how broad Lee's appeal still remains. For a lighter view of his pop cultural impact, a touchscreen lets visitors browse the achieve of the Bruce Lee comic strip which briefly ran in newspapers.

Passing through the magazine tunnel leads to one of the exhibit's highlights — enlarged old photos from Lee's days living in Seattle's International District. The pictures range from early martial arts displays at Ruby Chow's to snowball fights. These also tap into special feeling proximity that only Wing Luke can provide. Sometimes the locations captured in pictures (like his first studio) can be seen across the street. On a couple of occasions, items like lamps and statures in the pictures coincidentally turned out to actually be in the Wing Luke’s collection, so they’ve been hauled out of storage. It captures true sense of place that few museum exhibits even attempt to capture, let alone achieve.

The problem that Do You Know Bruce? runs into arises from being confined to such a small space (a single room, about 1,000 square feet). The exhibit just seems too brief. The confinement means that only a few items are required to represent large swaths of Lee’s life: A couple news stories to indicate his role in breaking interracial marriage taboos, a few screenshots to represent his film career, etc. Even reading everything and studying ever artifact probably shouldn't take much more than an hour. It’s concise to a fault (also the tiny space leads to some noise pollution from  the various videos). Certainly, taking in all three years of displays would offer a deeper sense of the man, but requiring a yearly checkup makes for a rather disconnected museum-going experience. It all comes down to the question in the exhibit's title — Do You Know Bruce? Well, I know him a little better now, but I still wish I knew more.

Do You Know Bruce
Thru 2017, Wing Luke Muesum, $15