Free admission: Reserve a spot here for the opening event.
Two companion exhibitions—Petaluma Chinatown Unearthed: Remembering the Past for a Better Future and Chinese Pioneers: Power and Politics in Exclusion Era Photographs— present a history of the social, political, and judicial disenfranchisement of Chinese Californians—as well as moments of Chinese agency and resilience—in the decades before and after the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Both are on view April 17-June 8 at the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum.
Petaluma Chinatown Unearthed is presented in partnership with the Petaluma Old Chinatown Memorial Park Ad Hoc Committee and uses artifacts, maps, and historical records to explore the years between the 1860s and 1890s, when Petaluma was home to a thriving community of Chinese laborers. By the 1900s, most residents of Chinese descent were driven out by racist scapegoating and a wide-spread Anti-Chinese movement. This exhibit also highlights what Petaluma’s contemporary AAPI community is doing to shed light on stories that are hidden in plain sight in.
Chinese Pioneers is drawn from the California Historical Society’s collections and consists of 11 free-standing pop-up banners. The exhibit begins in the Gold Rush era, when significant numbers of Chinese people began to arrive in California. Anti-Chinese sentiment led to protests, violence, and vigilante expulsions up and down the West Coast. The Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese laborers from immigrating, becoming citizens, and tightened restrictions on previous residents reentering the country. It is against this backdrop that the exhibit considers the broad range of nineteenth-century imagery depicting the first generations of Chinese Californians and how visual culture influenced, aligned with, and diverged from the politics of Exclusion and the actions of the state.
Download - Program flyer in PDF / PNG
The Petaluma Old Chinatown Memorial Park Ad Hoc Committee is a grassroots initiative, bringing together Chinese American scholars, genealogists, culinary artists, filmmakers, healers, students, and local residents.
Support for Petaluma Chinatown Unearthed and related programming is generously provide by:
- City of Petaluma
- Asian American Alliance of Marin
- Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition of North Bay
- Japanese American Citizens League
- Minami Tamaki LLP
- NBC Bay Area
- Von Chan DDS
- Frank Chong
- Petaluma River Park Foundation.
Chinese Pioneers is an exhibit by the California Historical Society and touring through Exhibit Envoy.
Institutional support provided by San Francisco Grants for the Arts and Yerba Buena Community Benefit District.
The Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation supported the first 6 bookings of this exhibition.
