Celebrate Asian-Pacific American Heritage

Rangoli is the art of drawing on floors and walls with colored powders to create a welcome for Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, and to ward off the evil spirits. Although rangoli has its origins in Maharashtra, it is practiced everywhere in India today.

On May 15 & 16, 2009, the NMAI produced and staged The Conversion of Ka'ahumanu, a play about Native Hawaiians struggling to adapt to the onslaught of Western influences, written by acclaimed playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (Native Hawaiian/Samoan). This video provides a behind-the-scenes look at the play's production and rehearsal, and features interviews with the play's director, set designer, and costume designer.

On June 12 and 13, 2009, The National Museum of the American Indian was transformed into a living celebration of Hawaiian Life and Culture. Join us at this year's celebration on May 26-27, 2012 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.

In this form of Cham or Tibetan sacred dance two Dharmapalas (Protectors of Truth) appear on stage gyrating with slow, modulated movements. The dancers are Tibetan monks who take on the persona of these Dharmapalas, deities whose role is to protect the cemetery gods.

Watch the 9-minute documentary film Music of Central Asia and the Aga Khan Music Initiative. The Aga Khan Music Initiative promotes traditional music as part of a broader programme of development that encompasses the physical, social, cultural and economic revitalization of communities in the Muslim world. Music of Central Asia, the Aga Khan Music Initiatives panoramic 10-volume audio-visual survey of contemporary tradition-based music from Central Eurasia, produced in conjunction with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, is part of these efforts.

Teens in ARTLAB+, the Hirshhorn Museum's design studio for teens, shot and edited this film on Smithsonian visitors' understanding of Asian American heritage.

Learn how three fiery, painful stings during an early morning swim in Hawaii changed the life of researcher Angel Yanagihara. Once the young biochemist had recovered from her box jelly encounter, Carybdea alata had her full attention. Now she works to unlock the secrets of venom of of these beautiful, and sometimes dangerous, angels of the sea.

In this first-of-its-kind collaboration, soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones join with traditional Chinese instruments to perform new works written for them by Grammy Award-winners Zhou Long and Chen Yi, among others. The New York Times praised the PRISM Quartet for its "sensitivity, technical assurance, and mellow sweet sound," while the Kansas City Star raved that "Music From China is music from heaven." This performance was recorded in concert in the Freer's Meyer Auditorium on March 1, 2009. http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/related/prism/progNotes.asp

Artist Zhang Chun Hong discusses her work in "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter." The exhibition is on view from August 12, 2011 to October 14, 2012. http://npg.si.edu/exhibit/encounter . Through the groundbreaking work of seven talented artists from across the country and around the world, "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter" offers provocative renditions of the Asian American experience. Their portraits of encounter offer representations against and beyond the stereotypes that have long obscured the complexity of being Asian in America. This exhibition is a collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

Curatorial assistant Noriko Sanefuji interviews Grant Ichikawa, a US veteran who enlisted after being relocated to a Japanese American internment camp with his family in 1942. Allowed to join the army after a need for interpreters, Mr. Ichikawa served proudly and in 2011, he and other veterans were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his service.

These are results of Dr. David Starr Jordan's 1902 United States Bureau of Fisheries expedition to the Samoan islands. Authors: David Starr Jordan, William Edwin Safford, Alvin Seale

This is the first volume of Gould's seminal work on Asian ornithology, encompassing species from "Palestine to the westward, and from the Moluccas to the east" with 76 full color plates. By John Gould and Richard Bowdler Sharpe.

The East–West Interchanges in American Art symposium was convened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on October 1–2, 2009. It is one of a series of Terra Symposia on American Art in a Global Context. This book brings together papers from the symposium that offer new avenues for research on Asian–U.S. artistic exchange. Each essay explores an aspect of the many ways in which American and Asian artists have interacted from the eighteenth century to present, from food to film, and from music to cars and medicine. Moreover, Asian Americans are a rapidly growing demographic group; population analysts predict that at least one in 10 U.S. residents will be of Asian heritage by the middle of the twenty-first century.

Shizu Saldamando discusses her work in "Portraiture Now: Asian American Portraits of Encounter." Shizu Saldamando (born 1978) depicts how American social spaces are the laboratories for new ways of being. Her portraits playfully suggest that race, gender, and ethnicity act as white noise to the scene at hand; audible, yet not identifiable. Saldamando's visual biographies, which use friends as her subjects, capture the energy of youthful experimentation and the freedom of malleable categories for identity. Born to parents of Japanese and Mexican descent, Saldamando resides in Los Angeles but grew up in San Francisco. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, for her undergraduate work and received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. About arriving in Los Angeles, she says: "Growing up in the Mission district in San Francisco, it was predominately a hip-hop culture. Here in Los Angeles, I'd go to shows or house parties, and it would be all Latino kids listening to the Cure and the Smiths. In L.A., I felt normal for the first time." Saldamando's meticulous collaged paintings offer the viewer a subtlety of influences to ponder. Recorded at NPG, September 16, 2011. Interview by Jasmine Fernandez, intern, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

Hear new works for violin, cello, piano, erhu, and pipa composed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Zhou Long; Beijing-based composer Lu Pei, and Chen Yi, winner of the Charles Ives Living Award. Two outstanding ensembles—Music From China and Music From Copland House—join forces for this performance, presented as part of the Bill and Mary Meyer Concert Series on November 3, 2011. http://www.asia.si.edu/podcasts/related/copland/progNotes.asp