Alison: The Museum of Chinese in America has created an exhibit that uses selections from its fashion and costume collection to tell the story of Chinese immigration to the US in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That is next after a short break.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. A capsule exhibition curated by the Museum of Chinese America called How We Dressed in the Beautiful Country is on view for the East Side house's annual winter benefit. The show is an amazing accomplishment given three years ago, there was a devastating fire that ruin MOCA's archives. The collection showcases the fashion of the mid-20th century featuring, for example, ornate hand-tailored traditional dresses and elaborate opera gowns.

The collection serves a visual narrative of the evolving lies of Chinese people immigrating to and living in New York City's Chinatown. Tickets to the winter show benefit can be purchased on MOCA'S website and the collection will be on view at the Park Avenue Armory until Sunday. Here with me now to walk us through the collection and preview upcoming initiatives at MOCA is President Nancy Yao. Nancy, welcome.

Nancy: Thank you, Alison. This is a pleasure.

Alison: Director of exhibitions Herb Tam. Hi, Herb.

Herb Tam: Hi, Alison. Thanks for having us.

Alison: Herb, this collection is made up of clothes from the late 19th to 20th century, including costumes and traditional dresses. Why this time period?

Herb: They're among the oldest pieces that we have in our collection. You mentioned the fire that we had three years ago. Again, in the collection, some of the most precious and fragile items are garments, things that people wore. They're not meant to last for 50 years, 100 years. After the fire, we really wanted to highlight these garments that really were the expressions of people in their day. One of the questions we're featuring is that of the Chinese Musical and Theatrical Association, which is around from the '30s to the '90s in Chinatown, and they preserved and performed Cantonese opera.

They were an amateur group of enthusiasts who wanted to keep the tradition alive. These costumes that they had in their collection are really rare. They're from the late 19th century. They were hand embroidered in Guangdong Province when that city was the capital of embroidery in China. They were damaged during the fire but they still even though they lived through that event retained the color, the expressiveness, the beauty, and the magnificence of the costume, and what Cantonese opera represented. That's a really important collection for us. The other collection--

Alison: I would like to bring Nancy, I want to ask a bigger picture question before we get into more of the details. When you think about clothing and these items, how do they help tell the story of Chinese American immigration and Chinese Americans' experiences?

Nancy: What I love about the traditional dresses and some of them are theatrical association dresses, but also what people wear every day. The other part of the collection is Eileen Pei who was the set mother of I.M. Pei, the renowned architect. What you see in the evolution of her dresses when she came as an immigrant to the United States is the different materials that were used.

Through that period of time in her life, how she westernized her selections, and even though she maintained the traditional mandarin collar and the tailoring of a Chinese qipao or cheongsam, you do see the evolution of more tweeds, more [unintelligible 00:05:15], materials that were accustomed to the climate change that she was experiencing, and also less silk. I think that it was the clothing really tells the story. It's what you want to maintain and treasure, those Mandarin collars, the traditional tailoring, but at the same time, the materials that need to evolve because you're living in a different place.

Alison: My guests are Nancy Yao, president of the Museum of Chinese in America, and Herb Tam, curator of the exhibit and director of exhibitions. We are talking about the show, How We Dressed in the Beautiful Country. I was glad that Nancy mentioned that she powered usually these beautiful, rich satiny colors and its silhouette. Where did the qipao get its distinct silhouette from, Herb?

Herb: That's a really interesting story. Qipaos are a general term for a garment made from one piece of fabric. As China began to modernize, in the late 19th, century, early 20th century, that garment, that qipao went from something that was loose and baggy to a form that was tighter fitting. Women demanded more types of clothing that they could more easily walk around in that wasn't weighing them down and the silhouettes of these dresses began to change according to the needs of the role of the new woman. They began to be tighter, using less material, began to take the shape of the bodies themselves. A really interesting story about how clothing tracks with social changes with time.

Alison: Can you say a little more about that? I'm curious. What do you mean?

Herb: Women were getting out of the house. They were working. They had office jobs in the new China. They were just getting out of house more. Women's feet were becoming unbound. They didn't have the same roles that they used to. This meant that they needed to wear different kinds of clothes and the qipao, which was once this really heavy dress form became a lot lighter and became more friendly for somebody who's moving around a lot more than they used to.

Alison: Nancy, you touched on this a little bit earlier. What's interesting about the fabrication that we'll see in how we dressed in the beautiful country?

Nancy: I love to have this moment because I just want to extol Herb. Herb is one of the leading curators in our country and despite the fact that MOCA is a small cultural museum, we put on time and time again some of the most beautiful exhibits. How we dressed in the beautiful country and beautiful countries, of course, the translation for the Chinese word for America. America translated is the beautiful country. That was the hopes and dreams that we had as immigrants coming to this new country. Despite the fact that we were not getting a first-class air flight from Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines, this was a very arduous journey from halfway across the world.

What we've done is I think Herbs' talented guess around his curation is really the simplified look, focus on the textiles. Look at the stories. Imagine what life was like. What we also understand about Eileen Pei is that she really was influential in the international foreign settlement in 1930, Shanghai. This is the metropolis of metropolises. Then when she moved to the Upper East Side, she became quite the social life. We see the evolution of this woman's journey as a young bride to the United States and how she kept her interest in being a part of social circles.

Alison: Herb, you mentioned the fire earlier. What kind of repair and restoration work did you have to do to make this possible?

Herb: The conservers that we have, the team that we have in collections has really done an amazing job with the whole collection which spans over 85,000 artifacts. They determined that the garments that we're showing were the safest that we could show. If you go to see the exhibition, you will see that there is damage to the CMTA, the opera costumes, color, the dyes have run but they determined that this is safe and that's been a lot of the work for the collections team is assessing the damage from the fire. There has been concentration work started, there has been repairs to things begun, but we're still in the early stages of that conservation work. The assessment has been done. We know what needs to be done, but now is the point where we need to start that work of repairing things.

Alison: Yes. Nancy, what have been some of the challenges as a whole that the organization has faced since the fire?

Nancy: What I will say is we are so grateful to the local community members, people from all across the country who said, this means something. There's value in this history, in this collection, but let's not assume that that was always the case. I think that we have really benefited from the renowned understanding of what US history is, our reckoning with that history, and really post Black Lives Matter and all that happened in that area to really say, "Hey, hey, we need to broaden this narrative."

I think that we have been a rich beneficiary of that, and we understand that we have our role to play to contribute to it. The word Chinese is not in the mission of the Museum of Chinese America. Our sole goal is to broaden the US narrative, and we are doing it with one story at a time.

Alison: Nancy, what kind of stories are you hearing from people who have been able to see the exhibit?

Nancy: They are so inspired because when I mentioned the word value, we assume that these narratives are valuable today and we see them, but there are moments when we weren't sure there was value in our history because that was the world we lived in. What we see is inspiration by the visitors. Oh, this is so beautiful. What was her journey like? Wait, this was, I am Pei stepmother. I think so much of that is also indicative of the wonderful coverage that we received after the fire, and how people said that, "Oh, we need to help out."

We actually went on the road to 10 cities to give inspiration to local communities to say your stories matter. That's been really a joy for us.

Alison: Herb, as Nancy said, you are an expert and a leader in this field, but something must have surprised you, along the way in curating this exhibition. What was something that grabbed you?

Herb: Yes, like with CMTA, the opera organization. I was surprised to learn that they did so much actually beyond just performing opera. They were really like a social service organization. They provided loans sometimes to their members. They offered housing to some of their members. They would sometimes help pay for weddings and funerals, their membership. At the time early in New York, Chinatown, most of the population of the neighborhood was men, but the CMTA, allowed women to join their membership even though it was uncommon for women to be a part of Cantonese opera in its early days.

Just like a really fascinating organization to know about because you would think that they would be very focused, but instead, they're very expansive in how they saw their mission and their work.

Alison: Nancy, the museum building that MOCA resides in was designed by Maya Lynn, of course, designed the Vietnam Vet Memorial, the Museum of African Art here in New York City. They're reading a Garden Cleveland. Is it correct she'll design a new and updated MOCA?

Nancy: Yes. Actually, she'll be talking about it tomorrow at four o'clock at the Park Avenue Armory. We invite everyone and all to hear about her new design for the new museum of Chinese America, which we are in partnership with so many organizations and the Department of Cultural Affairs here in New York. It'll be 80,000 square feet and we hope that will be ribbon cut in 2026.

Alison: Is there something-- when you're having these discussions in these groups, which you're willing to share, what you're willing to share, what is something that is a must-have for this new museum for you as president of the Museum of Chinese in America? What is something you really know the museum has to have?

Nancy: A storytelling and that storytelling comes from empowerment. It comes from understanding one's value and their own journey. I think that's why we anticipate that we will focus as much as being a local organization, as being a global destination. I think that's so important and museums really have that call to serve the local communities, to have artists and residents, organizations and residents, and to bridge that gap that exists for everyone.

Young people, seniors who have felt a bit of anonymity over the last 80, 90 years in this country to say that their stories matter. I think we'll be collecting very actively oral histories. We have a new oral history sound booth, with a really cool mic like yours, Alison, and we'll be retelling those stories and having them available on digital platforms. Also what we're really excited about is we can do this in any dialect. We can do to Mandarin in Cantonese, and we can pretty much do it in every language. We know that diaspora has gone to Vietnam, to Southeast Asia, to Jamaica, to Cuba, to all over the world, and we're happy to do that and make people feel comfortable sharing their stories.

Alison: We have been discussing how we dressed in the beautiful country. If you'd like more information about that, you can go to MOCA's website. I've been speaking with Herb Tam, curator of the exhibit and director of exhibition, and Nancy Yao, president of the Museum of Chinese in America. Thank you for being with us

Nancy: Alison, Happy Luna New Year. Thank you so much.

Herb: Thank you so much for having us.

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