Museum Paper

 
For this assignment, you should visit a local museum wherever you are located.  The museum you select should be a fairly general museum with a sizable art collection. 

Once you have decided on your museum, please visit the museum and conduct research on their website (or even get in touch with their collections manager.) Find out what types of Asian American art/visual culture objects the museum has.

This assignment may require a bit of ingenuity and the development of some sleuthing skills.  Please also note that it probably makes sense to look for a museum that is most likely to have some sort of Asian American art/visual culture collection.  It does not, for instance, make much sense to seek out an Asian American art collection at the local dinosaur museum. 
Your paper should address what works your local museum has, how they may have come to acquire those works, and how the works they hold represent the importance (or lack thereof) of Asian American identity in your town or the institution itself.

You may find that you cannot find any Asian American objects in any institution in your location. In that case, discuss why you think that might be. What are the demographics and the audience of that particular museum or the town or community that the museum is in? Why might they be invested (or not invested) in collecting Asian American materials? Do they put any relevance in issues of race, even of races and ethnicities that are not Asian American? Does this reflect the demographic or another factor of their location? What can the rest of the collection of the museum tell you about their priorities or their mission? Your paper should include a thesis statement (what is the argument you are making about that particular museum’s holdings?).

All assignments must be 750 words. Please be sure to use proper citations using the Chicago Style. For more information on the Chicago Manual of Style, please refer to the Purdue Online Writing Lab. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/717/01/ .