America’s Cultural Treasures: This article is part of a series sponsored by the Ford Foundation highlighting the work of museums and organizations that have made a significant impact on the cultural landscape of the United States.
In the early part of 2023, the Ford Foundation approached me with a project idea: to tell the stories of 11 art and cultural institutions designated “America’s Cultural Treasures” (ACT) that the foundation had been supporting. Because many of these organizations exist outside of the United States’ coastal hubs, the concern was that their missions and their work weren’t being understood or appreciated throughout the arts ecosystem. My colleagues at Ford recognized that the service they carry out is crucial in a way that sometimes evades easy explanation. They were seeking a narrative, journalistic account that made the case that what the Treasures do enriches and enlivens our humanity.
The way I approached this storytelling project was to gather information in person from these arts and culture institutions that exist outside New York City. Over the course of one year, I traveled to museums, theaters, and other community organizations to learn about their origins, what communities each serves, how they might tell a profoundly though less conventional American story; and how they all are exemplary in their service. Work on this began in August of 2023, when I began communicating with and arranging travel to these organizations: the Alaska Native Heritage Center; Michigan’s Arab American National Museum and Charles H. Wright Museum; East West Players and the Japanese American National Museum in California; El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in New Mexico; the National Museum of Mexican Art in Illinois; Penumbra Theatre Company in Minnesota; Project Row Houses in Texas; and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Washington State.
The Ford Foundation’s chief concern was that the exemplary work these organizations are doing may not be widely recognized, understood, or appreciated by others in arts and cultural networks outside their local communities. I traveled to each institution for face-to-face conversations with leadership, staff, board members, volunteers, participants in their programs, and artists and cultural workers who have partnered with them. My goal was to understand the primary concern that drives their creative mission and the particular local and civic contexts that shaped each organization’s inception. The resulting reports are based on conversations with 158 people that generated 139 transcripts, and supplemental information that includes institutional records, histories, published books, and other research sources. From deep investigation into this data, and writing the individual accounts, a few themes have emerged. Even more than their membership in the America’s Cultural Treasures group, it is these shared perspectives, ambitions, concerns, and methods that intimately connect these 11 arts and culture organizations.
One of the most relevant themes is the socioeconomic context in which these institutions find themselves. The space for civic engagement, that is, settings outside of work, religious institutions and the family home where community members who are essentially strangers to each other can meet and interact, is either in stasis or is shrinking. Mainstream culture in the United States has long admired, praised, and supported commercial enterprise, often at the expense of public resources. A viewpoint that valorizes privatization, deregulation, and the establishment of free market economies and regards profit-making as the chief metric of a society’s success has been ascendant in this country since around the end of World War II. There are vanishingly few places in the culture where our civic being is nurtured and honored. Public parks, plazas, and libraries function in this way. In some cases, museums, public art projects, and other communal spaces allow us to meet those with whom we share values and worldviews, or in some cases, don’t. In either event, these moments of cultural contact provide occasions to expand our perceptual horizons, strengthen our ethical immune systems, and increase our intellectual purchase on our world. In other words, our being can be made wider and deeper when we encounter others we don’t know.
Collectively, America’s Cultural Treasures facilitate the exchange of ideas and worldviews by providing space for communities to convene, learn, and create. This notion is made explicit by Jason Ordaz, director of communications for the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), which birthed the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA). As of 2023, the institute had a student body with roots in over 90 different tribes or nations. Ordaz explains that IAIA fosters comprehension among these students with widely different backgrounds.
“What I constantly hear from students is that they feel like this is their community. They feel like it’s home,” Ordaz says. “We’re educating them, of course, but I feel we’re giving them a sense of pride, belonging. We’re giving them an education in contemporary Native art, and I think we’re giving them each other.”
These Treasures help communities cohere in other ways, as well. When Motown legend Aretha Franklin passed away in 2018, for example, the Charles H. Wright Museum served as a space where mourners paid their respects as she lay in state for two days in the institution’s rotunda. This moment of commemorating a beloved hero is an occasion for people to communally grieve and, in their grief, to recognize others who are willing to share it.
These institutions also shrink the space between art and life by serving as places where community members might learn how to weave clothing or make jewelry, as with the Alaska Native Heritage Center. By creating programs that connect young people with elders who share cultural knowledge by holding regular classes, the center makes art a part of daily life, so that it is not seen solely as a commercial activity entered into for financial profit, but rather as a way to know oneself, connect to one’s ancestry and heritage, and be seen as a bearer of that culture.
Because mainstream US culture is steeped in profit-based thinking, institutions like these that accomplish the largely unacknowledged and subtle work of identity cultivation and community building typically face financial precarity. Many are caught in the wasteland between federal and local governments that tend to be parsimonious with arts funding, and a philanthropic class that is fickle in its support. Joël Barraquiel Tan, the former executive director of the Wing Luke Museum, alludes to this situation: “Philanthropy as is, is broken. And so, one of the pillars of our new strategic plan is [that] pillar: self-determination.”
The donor class rarely gifts institutions like the Treasures enough funds to be self-sustaining (a notable exception to this has been donations from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott). Instead, these organizations are caught in a cycle of grant writing and donor cultivation, which absorbs much of the energy that might otherwise be directed toward doing the work they were formed to do — a cycle that is subject to the whims of the financial markets. Additionally, much arts and cultural funding is allocated to particular programs, and while they may accomplish a good deal while they are active, these initiatives wilt and die when the funding stream dries up.
Moreover, the economic milieu constrains arts and culture by providing these institutions with funds restricted to a specific purpose, a tactic that betrays a kind of paternalism and a distrust in the institution itself to discern how grants might be best used to meet their mission goals. Sarah Bellamy, the president of Penumbra Theatre, explains, “I was learning, being the artistic director of this organization, what wasn’t written into that job description was that you had to change the field, you had to deal with the capitalistic tendencies of large organizations to colonize our work and leach resources from our communities.” She continues, “I had to contend with the fact that there were deeply entrenched practices in philanthropy that were not benign to us, but actually harming arts organizations of color. We are in mission. We are in alignment. The problem is the ecosystem.”
Given all of these impediments, the Treasures have collectively recognized that they too often begin their work from a position of scarcity and started to consider ways to fundamentally change this dynamic. Some of the staff members I spoke to have had preliminary discussions about a potential shared investment scheme, which may involve pooling their resources in a fund that could create a sustainable revenue stream for each organization.
Another pivotal aspect of the general culture within which these institutions operate is the fundamental failure of the public education system to convey the histories through which underrepresented people, particularly members of immigrant groups, can come to know themselves within a prevailing media culture that often renders them invisible.
For example, I was educated in the United States from primary school through to an MFA degree. And yet I was completely ignorant of the story of the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee, organized in 1943 in opposition to the federal government’s effort to draft into military service Japanese-American men who had been arbitrarily incarcerated after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The men were compelled to answer a document drawn up by the government that became known as the “loyalty questionnaire.” This survey included two concerning questions some respondents found difficult to answer: whether they were willing to serve on combat duty wherever ordered, and whether they would swear unqualified allegiance to the United States and renounce allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. There were 63 resisters and committee leaders who responded “no” to each of these questions, essentially refusing to participate in the draft. They were put on trial, convicted of Selective Service Act violations, and sentenced to either three or four years in prison.
Despite being the largest draft resistance movement in the nation’s history, this protest does not feature in popular accounts of US participation in World War II. And for several decades, the so-called “No-No” boys were perceived by many within the Japanese-American community as traitors to the United States. I also was never taught that the combined 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd combat unit, composed almost entirely of second-generation Japanese men, is recognized as among the most decorated units for its size and length of service in the history of the US military.
The Japanese American National Museum tells these stories with great insight and feeling, using text, photographic documentation, and artifacts such as a rebuilt Heart Mountain barracks preserved from the original concentration camp in Wyoming. As Jessica Rubenacker, the Wing Luke Museum’s director of exhibitions, explains, “I didn’t learn about the Japanese-American incarceration until I took an Asian American Studies course my senior year of college, and I just couldn’t believe that my Illinois public school education had failed me.”
All members of our society would benefit from knowing this noncanonical but quintessential American story, which is a testament to these Americans’ integrity, bravery, and willingness to place principle ahead of personal comfort.
These institutions also partake in a set of common concerns, tactics, and methods by which they carry out their respective missions.
It must be acknowledged, though, that these missions are disparate. Of course, they should be, because they serve different constituencies. East West Players, for example, cite their mission as “raising the visibility of the Asian American experience by presenting inventive world-class theatrical productions, developing artists of color, and providing impactful youth education programs.”
On the other hand, the Arab American National Museum states on their website: “Since opening in 2005, AANM’s goal has been to document, preserve, and present the history, culture and contributions of Arab Americans.” Among the ACT organizations, there are distinct commitments to education, preservation, presentation, innovation, and healing.
Though these commitments differ in terms of scope and focus, some tools are used by all the ACT organizations. One crucial implement is storytelling. The documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has said, “The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” This is a worthy goal — to change someone’s mind. But more than toiling to convince others of the value of your story and experience, these institutions seek to empower the storytellers and the communities that produce them. Telling these tales in a supportive space can lead to healing, as the presentation of the “No-No” boys within the Common Ground exhibition has helped the Japanese-American community to confront and metabolize the generational shame around this story.
Self-definition, which is a byproduct of storytelling, is empowering. Rather than having their stories told by cultural mechanisms that flatten and distort characters and ethnic characteristics, such as mainstream filmmaking, theatrical production, and popular music, “We define ourselves,” says Carlos Tortolero, the founder and former president of the National Museum of Mexican Art, “not the government, not the media and not corporate America. We define ourselves. That’s important.” When the members of a particular community feel rooted in their understandings of themselves, then it becomes possible to show others what they have missed.
Barbara Engelskirchen, the NMMA’s chief development officer and head of communications, reminds us that while stories are necessary for communication between differing communities, their content and vantage point matter. “The story has to be told by the right person or from the right perspective, which is why this museum is so important,” she says. “We tell stories related to Mexican art from the Mexican perspective, and that Mexican perspective is diverse. It’s multifaceted because you’ve got the voice of a recent immigrant who might be living in Little Village and just arrived a year ago or less, or you’ve got my experience, which is second generation.”
One of the most significant lessons of this project is that the story that empowers most listeners is not the account told from the perspective of the dominant culture. Rather, stories conveyed by the institutions that care for marginalized communities generally welcome more people because these accounts detail the trials, impediments, and harm that must be overcome. Most people on the planet have to cope with and manage various hindrances to their achievement of wholeness and health, or even survival. Therefore, more people can find a version of themselves in stories told from the viewpoint of the repressed.
In the stories that they discover, listen to, preserve, and tell, the Treasures make this acknowledgment and provide space for those who have felt overpowered, beleaguered, ignored, or just forgotten. For example, Project Row Houses (PRH) began as a hybrid real estate investment, urban renewal, and art project initiated by seven artists. They collectively purchased a lot of 22 dilapidated, shotgun-style houses that were being used for illicit drug trade in Houston’s Third Ward. Their vision of renovating these houses to transform them into a public art square and a place that would provide resources for the area was so compelling that their neighbors in adjacent districts, working at companies that include the petrochemical giant Chevron and the real estate conglomerate Hines, joined hands with Third Ward residents, donating not only money but also labor, time, and expertise. In addition to artists and neighborhood residents, employees of these corporations have served on PRH’s board of directors.
This collaboration between commerce, arts, and culture is very much part of the Treasures’ work, and challenges assumptions made by many in the arts and culture sector. For-profit businesses are often considered to be at odds with the goal of empowering communities and improving the quality of life of residents, and profit-making endeavors are thought of as sullying the effort to help communities spiritually and intellectually thrive. However, to fulfill their missions, these organizations recognize the need to recruit and make common cause with businesses. In terms of cultural tourism, Emily Edenshaw, the president and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, says, “We operate in Alaska. When I talk about the ecosystem, I want to share this: If I were just to look at the arts and culture sector in Alaska, all of the work that we do here and literally a leg of our stool, comes from tourism.”
Like the Alaska Native Heritage Center, many other ACT organizations have largely reconsidered the notion of purity, of refusing to partner with corporations or businesses. Instead, these organizations harness the energy of these companies to accomplish what they can. This refusal to see for-profit business as inherently inimical is a kind of humility — these organizations recognize that they must exist in the real world even as they try to change its parameters.
Elissa Wheeler, the store manager for the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, describes her work as helping art students become self-sufficient by participating in the marketplace in savvy ways. She explains, “I’m working with mentoring students on the campus. I buy a lot of wholesale [art] for the museum store from our students, and I realized a lot of them were coming in, and didn’t have a lot of experience with pricing their work, and they were underselling themselves so, so much. It was like, ‘No, please, no, no, no. How much did you pay in materials? How much time did it take you for this? Don’t tell me this is only going to be $20.’ And as I started working with a couple students, word of that has spread.” For Wheeler, art is not only a means for self-expression and cultural connection; it can also be a practical way to make a living.
At Project Row Houses, the labor carried out by various officers and employees of the organization brings people together across the divides of class, race, and geography, and it’s the labor that is welcoming to the wide variety of the Treasures’ audiences. As the majority of people in the world make their living through physical exertion, they recognize when labor is enacted to their benefit or care. The construction of this nation, too, has been a work of hands. It has also always been an imaginative invention — that a Somali engineer and a Swedish au pair could both come to the US and see themselves as citizens of the same state is an act of enterprising vision. However, it’s their labor that brings that vision into actual being, and the Treasures consistently valorize the toil that programs, exhibitions, and event organization require. Each institution applies itself to the work of recognizing the community member, gathering the stories of the community, telling these stories to audiences, educating their visitors, and healing the wounds that do not heal by themselves.
Perhaps the most obvious work that the Treasures share is educating the public. This certainly is culturally and politically significant, but it can also be holistically beneficial. Education requires recognizing individuals, seeing what they have to offer the community, and cultivating the inner artist, administrator, technician, storyteller. Maria Gaztambide, the executive director at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, talks about a program the museum runs that involves secondary school children creating a garden, and making practical use of what is grown.
“In Spanish it’s called Escuela Central De Artes Visuales, which loosely translates to ‘High School for the Visual Arts.’ It’s a public magnet school, just a few blocks from the museum. The way that [this program] works is that we have a garden at the high school, which is maintained by teachers and students, and the plants that are cultivated in that garden are plants from which you can extract pigments,” she says. “It’s full-cycle because the students are involved in the planting and the upkeep of the garden, then they learn how to extract the pigment and make the paint, and then they create their works. It’s like a yearlong program, and they do all of that and it culminates at the end of the school year with a little show of the work.”
This program is an apt encapsulation of the work done by all the Treasures. They nurture members of the communities they serve so they can blossom into their full being. In this way, these organizations cultivate what Sarah Bellamy of Penumbra terms “the beloved community.” Yes, each institution wants community members to see and experience their exhibitions and projects, but just as important is the organization seeing them in return. And with this recognition, the work can begin.
View all the essays in this series on Americas Cultural Treasures.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
