Cross-cultural, Cross-institutional Collaborative Art Project: Finding Family Stories

In this book, I examine Finding Family Stories, a cross-cultural, cross-institutional collaborative art project between various museums in the Los Angeles area from 1995 to 2003. As ethnic-specific institutions, the Japanese American National Museum and the Korean American Museum collaborated during the first year of the project, exhibiting artworks by Korean Americans and Japanese Americans at both venues concurrently. Through this cultural exchange, Korean Americans and Japanese Americans, as well as other ethnic communities, could learn the similarities and differences between the two cultures within the context of the multicultural society of Los Angeles. This book emphasizes the need for more multicultural and cross-cultural collaborative projects amongst community-based cultural institutions in Los Angeles. I conclude with a proposal for a collaborative project between the Korean American Museum and the California African American Museum as a way towards addressing long-standing tensions between these two groups since the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.