In 1953, Cleveland’s African American Museum became the first nonprofit museum of Black history in the United States. In 1969, Manhattan’s El Museo del Barrio broke ground by displaying major works from Puerto Rican artists in New York City.
Yet it wasn’t until spring of 2025 that the AAPI History Museum, a first-of-its kind museum centered on the past, present and future of the United States’ rich lineage of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, opened in Providence, R.I.
Founder and executive director Jeannie Salomon first conceived of the project as a travelling “mobile museum” in 2021, following an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I understand that lots of people — even Asian Americans, because [of] the prejudice that we face, or discrimination — sometimes try to blend in by neglecting our origin,” Salomon said. “So I thought this [was] very important to talk about that.”
With a grant from the Mellon Foundation, Salomon built the museum’s exhibits around four key themes: migration, identity, activism and solidarity. She described the act of defining Asian American heritage as “ongoing” and “changing” due to the United States’ history of exclusionary immigration policies, but she wanted the museum to center on empowerment and hope rather than a “victim mentality.”
“I have encountered someone who came in … and she just shook my hand and said, ‘This history — that’s me,’” Salomon said. “I actually saw tears streaming down her face as she talked about it. And she talked about the discrimination she faced when she was a little girl in Rhode Island.”
Providence’s Asian population is about 6%, but in her research, Salomon discovered that there was much more Asian American history in the city than she thought. To this day, Salomon said “nine out of 10” museum-goers will learn about the existence of the city’s Chinatown for the first time, and visitors flock from all over the country for a walkthrough of their families’ histories, which she called “healing.”
However, for Jason Chang, associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut, the rediscovery of Providence’s Asian American legacy is also a “chilling reminder that a community can disappear in two generations.”
“Asians were the first group to be racially excluded from naturalization and immigration, which was only ended in the middle of the 20th century,” said Chang, who also heads the university’s Department of Social and Critical Inquiry. “I think that puts a premium on the ways that Asian Americans relate to the United States and have formed their communities.”
As an educator, Chang described his students as showing greater investment in academics and campus life when they “feel like they belong.” Similarly, he said the AAPI History Museum offers Asian Americans a place “to connect with a deeper sense of purpose” in the United States, where they often feel stuck with the stereotype of “perpetual foreigner.”
With the Smithsonian planning a potential National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture, Chang believes museums should move away from a “stoic, monumentalist form of history” and frame AAPI stories as a part of America’s evolution.
“These are spaces where everyone can come to learn about the past and the present, but I think one of the most important things for people to take away is that they continue to imagine Asian Americans into the future – not just as something that is a lost chapter of the past, but that we’re involved present in participating and shaping the future with everyone else,” Chang said.
You can learn more about the AAPI History Museum, its exhibits and ongoing fundraising efforts, here.
Guests
- Jeannie Salomon, founder and executive director of Providence’s AAPI History Museum
- Dr. Jason Chang, associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut, head of the Department of Social and Critical Inquiry
