Think!Chinatown (心目華埠, T!C) — an arts and culture nonprofit based in Manhattan’s Chinatown — hosts a thought-provoking urban planning exhibition Making or Faking Chinatown? Representing People, Place and Culture.
On view July 18–October 2024, Making or Faking Chinatown explores the unresolved debate around cultural representation in Chinatown’s built environment through extensive research, photographs from Chinatowns across North America, and illustrations by artist John Lee. The exhibition is co-curated by T!C Director Yin Kong and architectural historian and SAH member Kerri Culhane.
In 2024, the NYC Economic Development Corporation launched the Chinatown Connections project, which includes the redesign of Manhattan’s Kimlau Square and creation of a “Chinatown Welcome Gateway,” a project has reignited the conversation about cultural representation. In Chinatowns around the world — but notably not Manhattan's Chinatown — Chinatown gateways, known as paifang,present a generic notion of Chinese culture for public consumption. Are these stereotypes or symbols of Chinatown?
As Manhattan’s Chinatown community prepares to take on this important public conversation, this timely exhibition explores the range of placekeeping and placemaking strategies in Chinatowns, from everyday life to the staged production of culture. Making or Faking Chinatown also provides context about the history of how the “Chinatown gateway” came to symbolize Chinatowns globally; previous attempts in New York; and, given Chinatown’s diversity, the lack of consensus of what an appropriate cultural marker could or should look like.
