Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA

This Sunday, the Chinatown Blogger visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. The museum has an extensive collection of Asian arts and the special exhibit, Yin Yu Tang, a 18th century Chinese house. The museum was established in 1799 as the East India Marine Society and later merged to become to the Peabody Essex Museum in 1992.

The Chinatown Blogger, out of respect for the museum, only took photos of the displays advertising the exhibits.

The Yin Yu Tang is the prized exhibit of the PEM. The house is 200 years old and belonged to the Huang family of Anhui, China. The house was meticulously disassembled and and shipped to the museum to be reassembled again. There is also a Yin Yu Tang gallery along with a video documenting life in rural China.

Other Asian exhibits included Perfect Imbalance, which runs until May 2009 and Gateway Bombay, a series of paintings and photos documenting life in Bombay, or what is now known as Mumbai. In addition to these special exhibits, the museum has permanent galleries of arts from China, Japan, Korea, and the Pacific Islands. One of the neat special exhibits was the Mysterious Photos, a collection of weird and funny Black and White photos of American life.

Founded by early ship merchants, the museum has a good collection of early American maritime arts. These included model ships and posters documenting their journeys across the Atlantic. The early ship merchants travelled to many parts of the world and collected (or stole, depending on how one sees it) items of interest. The Chinatown Blogger recalled 5-6 years ago when the Peabody Essex Museum displayed a collection from the Qing Imperial Court. The Chinatown Blogger kept pestering the tour guide how these Imperial items came into the hands of Americans and why it wasn’t the property of the Chinese government. The tour guide glared back with annoyance. The objects in question, seemed to have been “collected” or taken during the Boxer Rebellion when the city of Beijing was attacked by European and American forces. Anyhow, that’s old news and the Chinatown Blogger doesn’t hold any grudges but do wish that the truth be told on how museum artifacts were acquired.

Outside the museum, Salem was alive with vendors and performances in beautiful 60 degrees fall weather. A 3-man band performed Beatles cover songs while a street cart sold kettled popcorn, “slightly sweet and salty”. As this being Salem, the place where supposed witches were found, there were the usual promotions for the Witch Museum and tours. If you ever get the chance, check out the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA.

This entry was posted on October 15, 2007 at 7:08 pm and is filed under LIFE AND STORIES OF ASIAN AMERICANS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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