New York: Museums

[oyceter]

Note: Not in New York, just incredibly behind in writing stuff up!

This time visiting New York, I actually had time to go around and explore, as opposed to trying to grab everyone and socialize (which is also fun! And I did that too!). Since I've been to NY quite a few times before and seen some of the more well-known museums, I decided to go to slightly less famous ones this time around.

(Though I still went to the Met for the superhero exhibition.)

Museum of Sex:

This was rather odd. The special exhibit was on the world of animal sex, with the political bent that it's silly to label human sexuality as "natural" or "unnatural" given the range of animal sexuality. I particularly liked the display on the matriarchal primates though! Mostly, I liked it, only I didn't learn that much, as a lot of the information I've either gathered from the internet or from books like Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation.

Upstairs was a special exhibit on sex in US films, from early Hollywood to the porn industry. Let me just say, it was awkward standing around reading placards while hearing tons of film-people moaning their way to orgasm around. Also, a lot of the visitors that day (or in general, who knows?) were couples. And though the write-ups tried to contextualize everything and though the museum seems to have a fairly progressive standpoint with regard to sexual orientation, cis/transgender issues and sexism, it was still a very depressing exhibit. Because it was an overview of Hollywood, it was very white, very male, and very heterosexual; while there were a few examples of transgendered people or gay and lesbian people being treated like actual people, mostly it felt very exploitative. Ditto with the emphasis of the sexiness of the "foreign" and "exotic."

I found the porn industry stuff even more depressing for the same reasons. Again, though there were some counterexamples, and though the museum was quite obviously making a comment, it made me feel really filthy watching image after image of stereotyped women, black men, Asian women, gay men, lesbian women, MTFs and FTMs. Blech.

The bits from the museum's collection also felt the same. There was a little film on robot sex, in which the female robots were literally getting screwed (I winced as I watched), to machines that have dildos hammering into women. The message seemed to be that guys get life-like dolls with expressions and soft skin and hair while women get painful-looking, industrial machines; women are objects either way.

National Museum of the American Indian:

This is in a really beautiful building, although the museum itself is fairly small (probably because it's an offshoot of the main Smithsonian museum). Also, a lot of galleries were closed in preparation of a coming exhibit on women and clothes (want to see!). My favorite part here was the remix one: people from different tribes and racial backgrounds (all Native, but many multiracial people) redefining what "American Indian" or "Native American" means. My favorite was a thirty-minute home video of a Native woman learning 30 different dances; none of the dancers looked professional, but they were having so much fun. Another favorite was a display of European pastel figurines dressed in Georgian-style clothing, only their heads were knocked off and replaced with Native figurines.

Museum of Jewish Heritage:

Like the Museum of Sex, this museum, which is specifically on the Holocaust, didn't have much information that I didn't already know, but seeing it laid out again was still painful and moving—pain at watching almost everyone in the world turn a blind eye, save Denmark and individuals acting out, moving to see the anger and the pride. The opening piece in the exhibit is of a torah recovered from the Nazis: they had planned on using it as a museum display of the wiped out Jewish race, and instead, it is part of a museum display celebrating Jewish survival.

It's not a museum that grants you peace of mind, but it's necessary, especially the details. I was also thinking that we need museums like this for slavery, for the attempted (and still being attempted) genocide of American Indians, for what is going on today with Muslims and Middle Eastern people. Which is not a critique of the Museum of the American Indian; I think both a celebration of a culture and a highlighting of oppression are needed.

Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology:

I have nothing really insightful to say about this, except, hey, clothes! Also, people were much shorter and thinner in the Victorian era, which we all knew. I'm not sure the exhibition accomplished its goal in going for influential women in fashion, particularly for those who weren't designers, but that may just be my own ignorance about the industry. Part of it was the non-designer women were frequently people who bought haute couture, and I felt there wasn't a very good explanation as to how that influenced fashion per se.

And then, on my way out, some jerk decided to randomly konnichiwa/ni hao/annyeong me. And I couldn't think of what to do, and I wasn't sure if I should even do anything. I was trying to calculate if I could run, if anyone would help me if the guy didn't back down, if if if, and in the end, I didn't look at him and went the subway. I hate that SO MUCH, the helplessness and the anger and the fear. And while this is irrational, I was even more pissed off because there was an E. Asian guy next to the white guy harassing me, and he didn't say a thing, and I felt so betrayed.

Which makes three for New York. Last Thanksgiving some white guy babbled at me, and when I thought he didn't know English and was trying to figure out how to say "croissant," he asked me if I knew Chinese. "Uh. Yes," I said, then quickly wished I hadn't answered. "Well, so do I," he said proudly. "So?" I said back to him, and he looked so affronted that I didn't want to help him practice. Neither of these were as scary as when a guy on the street yelled at my sister, her friend and I to get out of the US, but still. And it makes me sad that the first reaction is: "At least it wasn't as scary as..."

Comments

[chi-zu.livejournal.com]

Hey! I really wanted to reply to your NY post and try to meet-up, but my summer schedule has been worse than being in school for various reasons. But! I wanted to say that I'm excited to be moving near another lesser known NY Museum, which would be the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Yay! You should check it out if you get a chance next time.

And, that your angry-making story reminds me of a more lighthearted version that happened to me. I was looking at a place Monday and the woman who lived in the apartment was Japanese with a very thick accent. The landlord was very nice, but I could only laugh when he very politely asked me with surprised wonder in his voice what ethnicity I was because "[my] English is impeccable!" Likely because he was used to dealing with the recently emigrated Japanese woman. I've never been mistaken for a non-American before by someone with whom I'd been conversing for even a few minutes. It was sort of hilarious. He was Egyptian with a touch of Brooklyn accent and I shared in return that it was a bit of a mental disconnect to me to encounter someone who looked like him with that particular accent. It all sorted itself out.

But I'm sorry you keep having these depressing encounters. It rarely happens to me, but I think that ethnically, I'm harder to pin down when people look at me, so I get out of some of that.

[oyceter]

I was really tempted to call you up but figured you were probably insanely busy and did not want to bug you!

I keep wondering if these incidents just stand out more because I'm traveling or what, except on a purely subjective basis, I feel I don't get it very much on Bay Area. Probably because I live in parts of Bay Area in which E. Asian people are EVERYWHERE. Thank god.

I was really tempted to ask stupid "Konnichiwa" guy if he spoke English (he was white), but didn't think of that until I was on the subway, of course.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Was the Museum of Jewish Heritage only about the Holocaust? If so, I'm not too happy about that. That's not my heritage. That's something that happened, yes. But there's plenty of other things to fit in such a museum, many of which happened in this country. (Social justice struggles, historical neighborhods, etc.)

Anyhow, regarding the last bit, I'm glad you are ok.

[oyceter]

Yeah, the name of the museum isn't particularly well-chosen. It is very specifically a Holocaust museum; it has bits that talk about Jewish culture pre- and post-Holocaust, but the focus is still on the Holocaust. I was glad to see that there's another museum (I think larger?) dedicated to Jewish culture and heritage in NY, but yes to the bad naming.

[karenhealey.livejournal.com]

Ugh, what total assholes! I don't think it's irrational to feel more pissed off and betrayed that someone else's silence enabled the assholery, either.

[oyceter]

I hated them so much! And it wasn't the only time, just the most noticeable (some other "konnichiwa" incidents happened around more tourist-y areas).

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Sounds like great exhibits! Sorry about that sicko, if I had been with you we would have fixed that fool's wagon.

[oyceter]

Sigh, yeah. But the museums were very cool!

[cofax7]

Rather than an offshoot, the NMAI in NYC is actually the original; the Smithsonian NMAI came rather later. But much of the funding is from the same sources, IIRC.

I'm sorry you got harrassed on the street: that's terrible, and rather shocking to me. I mean, it's New York, not Peoria. People suck.

[oyceter]

Oh, I hadn't realized! Thanks for the info.

I was really shocked about the harassment too, especially how it's been several times now; there are a lot of Asians in NY, but I guess still not as visible as in Bay Area.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Smithsonian NMAI is the junior institution here, and the heart of its collections are what was originally the massive turn-of-the-century private collection of George Gustav Heye. One of my aunts used to work at the old Heye Foundation museum -- I haven't seen this new Smithsonian facility that opened in '94, but the old place was pretty tiny, and only displayed a very small fraction of Heye holdings. If memory serves correctly, the old displays also had very much of the old-fashioned artifacts-as-museum-pieces, with not a lot of attention paid to cultural context or even acknowledgment of living cultures, just a focus on the dusty past.

(And ugh, sympathies on having to deal with that jerk! Perhaps this chestnut of NDN snark (http://www.aaanativearts.com/article1596.html) can be of some slight inspiration for further comebacks?)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Neat museums, thanks for the writeup. Sorry about the jerkwad.

[oyceter]

I thought of you for the animal sex exhibit, even though it is sadly not about emasculating plants!

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I thought of you for the animal sex exhibit

Oh yeah, baby, that's how I think of her too.

*cough*, I mean, uh, yeah.

Sucks about the guy; once at work me and a few other people were sharing stories about ridiculous things people had said to us recently, and it was nice how much of the sting that took out of it. (Me and another white woman were like "Someone called you an EGGROLL??11!" to a Chinese guy, they were both like "People MOO at you??!!", etc.)

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

AAAARGGGH - feel your pain. Sorry you had to deal with that racist bullshit.

Definitely going to check out the FIT Museum on your recommendation!

[oyceter]

Do check it out! There's an exhibit on goth-ness on now, I think! It's a very small museum (just two or three rooms, tops, and very narrow at that), but it's free.

[wizened-cynic.livejournal.com]

Random latecomer to this entry (I was in the mood for reading on reflections about race and racism so I came over to your journal) but:

Neither of these were as scary as when a guy on the street yelled at my sister, her friend and I to get out of the US, but still ..

I'm living in Hong Kong but I spent most of my life in Canada. I've only been back for a little over a year but I never, ever want to go back and live in Canada. Why? Because a couple of months before I moved back, I was talking to my mom in Chinese while we were walking out of the doctor's office and some random white dude screamed in our direction for us to speak English.

I'd lived in Canada for 16 years and that was the first time I'd actually been confronted with such a direct act of racism. I was shocked, disgusted, but mostly SCARED. We didn't say anything back, partially because we were in shock, and partially because we didn't know what he would do if we told him to fuck off (in English).

After spending a few months in Hong Kong, I can say that I feel so much more comfortable and SAFER here, not being a visible minority.

The experience still haunts me. It's not something I can brush aside easily.

Anyway, your post reminded me of this and it makes me sad that it didn't just happen to me, it happened to you, and it probably happens to many minorities all over the world everyday.

[oyceter]

Ack, I'm so sorry! I think it's so hard to convey just how scary that is—your brain afterward is like, "Oh, I should have just said that or argued or whatnot," but there's always that not knowing if it will get violent or if the person will just go away or what. And it so yanks to security out from under you.

And yeah, even though New York is diverse in ways Bay Area isn't, I feel so much safer here because there are so many Asians around, and visibly so.