| Maya Lin's Latest |
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| February 2007 | |
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Located at The new space will be six times bigger than its current
home, a compact gallery and archive tucked away on the second floor of an old
school building on Mulberry and Bayard Streets in the middle of The multi-million dollar expansion program is expected to be completed by the end of this year, with a new 12,500-square-foot space accommodating the museum’s future growth. By 2009, the museum expects 45,000 visitors annually. The new location will house MoCA’s exhibit galleries, a community tea room, a bookstore and multi-purpose rooms, while the current museum will be converted into a library and archives for public research. The new site—a former industrial machine repair shop in a non-descript six-story building—will be revamped by Lin very soon, and she insists on recycling the existing material to preserve the place’s old self. “I will expose the bones of the building and create a new identity within it. So there will be a balance of old and new,” she says. Instead of building another glitzy structure, in line with the new-fangled hotels and condos sprouting up in the increasingly gentrified neighborhood, Lin says she decided to preserve the building’s “industrial touch” while incorporating Chinese architectural aesthetics.
“Site-specificity” has been a key element to many of Lin’s
designs. When she first saw the location, Lin says, it reminded her of the
traditional Chinese courtyard housing where her mother once lived in The museum will have a translucent glass façade, and the half-veiled visual effect will continue within. Lin plans to set up projection screens and shoot light beams across the courtyard and illuminate artifacts and projects in the museum proper, offering visitors a “hint” of the treasures inside. *** The “in-betweeness” of the location, and the incorporation of contemporary and traditional architectural aesthetics, is a manifestation of the dual heritage that many Chinese Americans inherit, Lin says. She says growing up as the only Asian family in a
predominantly white neighborhood in “I was your typical ABC kid, my brother was the only other Chinese American I knew of. I don’t quite fit in, and I don’t understand why,” she says. “It wasn’t until my 20s, that I really understood that a lot of my work has been strongly influenced by my father and his art works,” she says. “That just happens. You can’t disassociate your childhood and what you become eventually, nor can you draw a linear approach to it. What my parents gave me was really not preaching; it was a cultural identity that shows up in my works that I wasn’t even aware of. It informs our psyches,” she says. Lin is emotionally committed to the MoCA project, even more
so as a mother wanting to educate her own two children about their cultural
heritage. “I realize that we are, and have been, a part of this country for a
very long time, and yet to this day, people can look at me and say: ‘Where are
you from?’ And I could say Lin believes MoCA will serve a vital role in educating people about Chinese American history and their contributions to America. Perhaps if there was more of a dialogue about the Chinese American experience, then there would be a greater acceptance of Chinese Americans, she says. “From Wen Ho Lee to James Yee, the question of suspicion arises—even though they are American citizens. It’s going to keep on happening until we make people realize we are the slaves of the West; we built the [transcontinental] railroad. If people saw that and really understood that, maybe they won’t be asking ‘Where are you really from?’ anymore.”
If You Go MoCA is still open at its original location during construction. 70 Mulberry Street, 2nd Floor The new location is expected to open in late 2007. For more information, visit www.moca-nyc.org. |
