On one of their regular strolls around the Chinatown International District (CID), former Wing Luke Museum executive director Joël Barraquiel Tan asked Cassie Chinn to tell them about the negatives of the neighborhood. Instead, Chinn shared stories of joy and strength. To her, that defined the neighborhood far more than any obstacles could, Tan said.
As Chinn’s 32-year tenure as deputy executive director of the Wing Luke Museum comes to an end, stories like Tan’s define her legacy.
Chinn departed from the museum in August. Leaving the Wing was a difficult decision to make, Chinn said, but it felt like it was the right moment.
“The current leadership, the host of directors that I work with, are amazing leaders,” Chinn said. “The opportunity for the next generation of leaders to step into the role is incredibly important to me. So if my stepping away into a different position enables other folks to step in and step up and have the opportunity to grow and to have the experiences that I had then, all the better.”
Chinn’s departure coincided with Tan leaving as executive director of the museum in mid-September. The museum appointed Kamahanahokulani Farrar Law as interim director pending a search for a new director. According to the museum, filling the executive director role will take precedence over hiring a new deputy director.
When Chinn first started at the Wing Luke as a college intern in 1992, she came across an oral history her grandmother recorded with the museum. Learning stories of her personal history that she had never known drove Chinn to help the community tell its own stories.
Chinn said she has now transitioned to the role of the culture service liaison at 4Culture, a King County cultural funding agency that provides grants for public art programs and on-site galleries.
“My biggest takeaway is not any one single project,” Chinn said, “but being able to work alongside community members and being on the receiving end of their generosity, of giving them their stories, their lives, their time. That’s what touches me the most.”
Former Wing Luke executive director Ron Chew said that while he’s credited as the chief pioneer of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) system, Chinn was instrumental to the development process and its active role in setting the Wing Luke apart from other museums to this day.
“She creates projects that celebrate who we are as Asian Pacific Americans,” Chew said. “She preserves history. She brings people together to talk through complex issues in a way that makes healing possible.”
First developed in 1993, the CAC works with the community to create exhibits that highlight and empower everyday people in the neighborhood, Chew said.
“What a powerful process to see the collective good that can come when people come together,” Chinn said. “How powerful it has been to experience individuals sharing their stories and how powerful that is for them as an individual, and to see the impact that one person sharing their story can have on others. Because that will spark other people to see that they hold similar stories and experiences and that they want to step out and share that story.”
Community-driven exhibits at the Wing are more than just a preservation of personal heritage, but also a show of strength and resilience in the CID, said Chinn.
Chinn said the CID has long been a place of belonging and empowerment for the Asian American community, yet it faces threats from public infrastructure projects and lack of investment that causes displacement, undermining the community’s sense of stability and worth.
“How can we [turn these ongoing issues] and step into our strength, our value, our worth? How do we not let all of that fracture us or pit ourselves against one another, but instead come together in collective strength, in collective win?” Chinn said.
The CAC and the exhibits it produces use community organizing strategies to position the museum in anchoring the survival of a very fragile neighborhood, said Chew.
“This kind of struggle should be both expected and embraced,” Barraquiel Tan said. “There’s never going to be a moment in any real community grassroots work where there isn’t some kind of conflict that leads to suffering that leads to confusion and uncertainty. Why wouldn’t it when we’re already living in uncertain times? The point is to be able to stay in the room long enough to have the conversation.”
Chinn’s commitment to continue advocating and investing in the CID community remains as she steps into her new role at 4Culture, emphasizing that this transition is about uplifting the CID from a new vantage point.
“There are so many different projects that I was able to work on at the Wing Luke Museum through 4Culture support,” Chinn said, reinforcing that emotional, and monetary investment in the museum allows the Wing to do the projects that make an impact.
Barraquiel Tan knows that Chinn will continue impacting the community.
“It’s about relinquishing control and also having faith that the collective wisdom, the collective soul of the community will be what ascends and floats up,” he said.
For her part, Chinn knows that she hasn’t done this work alone. Without\ the leadership and community members she has worked alongside with, the Wing would not be the nationally-recognized cultural landmark it is today, Chinn said.
“My heart and my appreciation are with the folks who continue the work and have been doing the work,” Chinn said. “This work is hard, and I’m grateful and excited to support it in a new way through my role at 4Culture. Hopefully, I can help make it a little less hard.”
