Exhibition - Five Senses of Chinatown

Five Senses of Chinatown captures the unique character of Manhattan Chinatown through artwork by students from local schools, historical artifacts from the Museum’s Collection, and interactive sense stations. The Museum staff collaborated with teachers and students from Transfiguration School, MS 131, and the High School of Dual Language and Asian Studies. Together, they created a diverse range of works—drawings, paintings, collage, poetry and digital artwork—which portray Chinatown through sensory associations of characteristic spaces: homes, public parks, street life, businesses, eateries, grocery stores, and bubble tea shops. To link the present with the past, their work will be shown alongside historical photographs and artifacts of Chinatown from the Museum’s Collection. Five Senses of Chinatown is a collective portrait of the neighborhood as expressed through sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings.