Happy Friday, DMV! It’s May 29.
This month was Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and it’s coming to a close. To recognize the month, I made a trip to the National Mall.
I started this past rainy Saturday at the National Museum of American History, which has an exhibit about the Filipino community living and working in agriculture in California from the 1910s to the 1970s. I joined a small group tour, led by museum curator Sam Vong and organized by D.C. members of the Asian American Journalists Association. The show, “How Can You Forget Me,” is told through steamer trunks found in 2005 at a group home where several Filipino men lived in an area in Stockton that later came to be known as Little Manila.
The show got me thinking about migrant labor, uprooting and how we — Americans, all of us — have this generational pattern of separating ourselves from our families and communities. It takes a certain amount of grit and determination to move for work. But it also creates vulnerability — a separation from familial and social structures that buttress us through hardship.
It was also interesting to see in this exhibit these men’s treasured possessions — photos, letters, tailored three-piece suits. What do you keep when your life must fit in a steamer trunk?
I made my way afterward across the Mall to the National Museum of Asian Art, which had sent a newsletter last week with a quiz about an outdoor sculpture called “Public Figures” by South Korean artist Do Ho Suh. That quiz got me curious enough to check it out.
“Public Figures” by Do Ho Suh. (Alisa Tang)
Kelyn Soong (a former Washington Post colleague who organized the American history museum tour that I went on) wrote about the piece in Smithsonian magazine when it was unveiled two years ago:
When Suh, who was born in South Korea in 1962, began work on Public Figures in 1998, he had been living in the United States for nearly a decade. In that time, he observed how the architecture of public monuments was entrenched in honoring the power structure and grand narratives. Suh wanted to move beyond the pedestal model of memorialization.
“In fact, I want to undermine the pedestal entirely,” he says in a statement provided by the museum. Public Figures displaces “the single, heroic individual by extracting the figure from on top of the pedestal and installing it below, reducing its size and anonymizing and multiplying it. When the viewer looks up, they encounter a void. As they look down, the stone of the pedestal gives way to many figures—a mass of people that both support and resist the weight of the pedestal.”
The sculpture, unveiled on the National Mall in 2024, is on display through 2029. (Alisa Tang)
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📰 News around the DMV
Many fired probationary federal employees have not ‘moved on,’ survey shows (Federal News Network)
12 things to do around D.C. this weekend (The 51st)
The best beaches within 3 hours of D.C. (City Cast DC)
🌼 Things to do
Petworth Porchfest is Saturday. While you’re there, join the D.C. Sing-Along 3-3:45 p.m. at 5315 8th Street NW.
📷 Your joy
(Elisa Rosman)
Elisa Rosman, 53 (when she sent this photo in March), of Arlington, Virginia, sent in this photo she took while hiking on Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park.
“We have lived here for about 30 years, and for most of those years Old Rag has been on my mind as a place I'd like to hike but could never figure out a good time to do it. And, truth be told, I was scared of the rock scramble,” she wrote in her submission.
“We finally did it … and it was a truly amazing hike! I can't wait to do it again!
I’m running low on your photos — show me the fun in your spring life. Your art outings. Your bike rides. Your hikes. And importantly, your school graduations!
⛰️
