Unlike the Gettys and Guggenheims and all the other people who have museums named after them, Wing Luke was not especially rich. He was was a Chinese-American dude, son of a laundryman, who became the first Asian-American (or minority of any color) elected to the Seattle City Council. After his death in 1965, friends, constituents, and supporters established the Wing Like Foundation, which later opened the Wing Luke Museum in the city’s International District, a/k/a Chinatown, where I visited a few weeks ago.
When I walked in, my choice of two pretty workers smiled at me from the front desk. I picked the one with a purple ribbon in her hair, just because I like purple. This was a first Thursday of the month, the day for free admission to most area museums, but Wing Luke doesn’t play by those rules. I knew that before coming, though, so I forked over $15 to get in (two dollars off, senior discount).
The purple ribbon woman asked if I was interested in the historic hotel tour, which is free with the museum ticket, and I said, “Mos def.” It’s a museum of Asian-American culture, and sure, I like me some art, but the hotel tour is mostly why I’d come.
Before it was a museum, the building had been a residential hotel — cheap, private bedrooms, but the bathroom and shower are down the hall, shared with all the residents. Reconstructing the place as a museum, they left several upstairs rooms and a hallway unaltered, and that’s where the tour takes you.
I frickin’ love rez hotels, philosophically and from experience. Lived in several different hotels when I was a dirt-poor San Franciscan, and I’d be living in one here in Seattle, but this city stupidly banned rez hotels in the 1970s. That’s part of why Seattle leads the world in homelessness — banning rez hotels eliminates the cheapest housing option, and by definition, if the cheapest housing is gone then more people go homeless.
The purple ribbon lady told me that their next hotel tour would be at 1:30, and she gave me an oversized tour ticket on a lanyard, that said 1:30 in huge letters. She said there’d be an announcement over the public address, five minutes before the tour, so I slipped the lanyard over my neck and off I went, to absorb some culture.
The featured artist of the month seems to be Lauren Iida. My favorite of her pieces was “Under the Same Moon,” three colorful imaginary maps on black, showing vignettes of life made from hand-cut paper, ink, watercolors, and acrylic.
I was mildly mesmerized by Safwat Saleem’s “Anxieties of an Immigrant Father,” a collection of dozens of big charcoal drawings with text, sort of like a giant comic strip only artier, tracking a father’s worries about his child at various ages. The text was wry, like, “You’ll poo when we are out and I won’t have any spare diapers,” “You will no longer be excited to see me at the end of the day,” “You won’t learn Urdu early enough to be able to talk to my mother while you still have a chance,” all building up to a mild gut-punch in the final drawing, “You won’t like my art.”
There were several gorgeous jungle and space-scapes by Tyler Pahang, all dark but bright in their darkness, which doesn’t make sense but it’s true. There’s a big piece by Nari Baker, images of family they’d been separated from and searched for over decades, on cloth the size of bedsheets. There’s a beautiful 88% realistic painting of downtown Seattle before the bum era, by Kenjiro Nomura. Something called the Tateuchi Story Theatre was locked tight.
In the historical section, racism is on display, with items like a 1903 pamphlet published by the US Department of Commerce, titled “The Exclusion of Chinese from the United States.” And no, it’s not a complaint about the exclusion; it’s the exclusion itself, on paper. Also, there’s an exhibit of “Evacuation Sale” signs — buy this shop, this building, this car for as much as 50% off, because people were being forced into concentration camps. We’re a repulsive race, the humans.
A section called “Southeast Asian Pasts and Futures” is like an old-style ethnic grocery store, with shelves of tea, freeze-dried seaweed, shrimp chips, crackers, and Spam, and a whole lot more. The displays aren’t for sale, or I might’ve bought a can of Spam.
There’s a large map of Seattle’s International District from long ago, showing all the Asian-run hotels and rez hotels, cinemas, laundries, groceries, bars, and restaurants. The area still has a gazillion restaurants, of course. I was getting a bit hungry by this point, and planning a stop at Asia Bar-B-Que, but first there’s more to be said about the museum.
This being Seattle, there’s a room dedicated to Bruce Lee, which seemed to be the busiest and most popular part of the museum. Among many other mementos, there’s a brief clip of Lee’s motion picture debut in 1941, playing an infant girl in the Cantonese feature, Golden Gate Girl (1941). There’s photo of Lee when he was washing dishes (and living) at Ruby Chow’s, a famous local restaurant.
Lee was a fascinating character, and I would’ve stayed longer in the Lee Room, but it was too crowded for me. And anyway, he’s all over American pop culture; there’s probably nothing to be learned about Bruce Lee at the Wing Luke that can’t be learned by searching the internet.
When I glanced at a clock it was almost 2:30. I’d lost track of time, but I never lost my ears — despite purple ribbon’s promise, the 1:30 hotel tour had not been announced over the public address. The next tour was scheduled for at 3:30, but I’d seen enough of the museum and I was hungry and my legs were tired, so I decided not to kill another hour. Instead I left, disappointed that I’d missed the tour.
Walked several blocks, all the way to Asia Bar-B-Que, before remembering that I was wearing a Wing Luke lanyard for that tour. It’s a nice lanyard, too — big yellow cloth loop, clipped to an extra-large green ticket, which is laminated. Too tuckered to walk back to the museum, I reckon I’ll keep the lanyard as a souvenir.
3/18/2025
Wing Luke Museum
719 S. King Street, International District
Price: $17
Displays: Art! History! Cool!
Tour: Nope.
Transit: virtually all transit in the county comes within a few blocks.
Verdict: YES, but bring an alarm watch.
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