Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative Public Talk Series - Talk Four

Date 28 November 2023
Time 11am - 12:30pm
Location Online

Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and Public History: Reflecting Immigrant Stories from A Local and Global Perspective 

美国华人博物馆与公共历史: 从本地和全球角度反映移民故事
 

  • Zoom ID: 812 0303 1870
  • Password: 12345

Meeting Zoom link

The talk will be given in English. Simultaneous translation into Chinese is provided.

Chair: Dr. Cangbai Wang, Reader and Co-Director of HOMELandS, University of Westminster

Speakers: Ms. Yue Ma, Director for Collections and Research and Mr. Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibition, Museum of Chinese in America.

Yue Ma, Director of Collections and Research, and Herb Tam, Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) will discuss the complexities of public history work within the Museum of Chinese in America. Yue Ma will present the development of MOCA's collection and its relevance to contemporary researchers, scholars, students and artists.

Herb Tam will expand on the vision and conceptualization of MOCA's exhibitions and their relationship to the collection and audience expectations. Their talk will reveal how various dynamics - resources, visitor feedback, institutional history, local and global politics - impact the work of a medium-sized social history museum embedded in an ethnic enclave.

The event is jointly hosted by HOMELandS (Hub On Migration, Exile, Languages and Spaces) at the University of Westminster and the Chinese Heritage Centre of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. It is organised as part of the ‘Global Diasporic Chinese Museums Network Initiative’ project funded by AHRC. 

About the speakers

Yue Ma, Director for Collections and Research, has been with MOCA since 2006 and is in charge of the museum collections, library, and archives. Prior to MOCA, Ma worked at Shenzhen City Archives in China.

Herb Tam has been the Curator and Director of Exhibitions since 2011. He recently co-curated ‘The Moon Represents My Heart: Music, Memory and Belonging’. Tam was born in Hong Kong and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.