Controversial Wing Luke Museum Exhibit Relocates to a New Venue

by Phil Manzano

A controversial exhibit that sparked a staff walkout at the Wing Luke Museum will reopen at a yet-to-be-named venue, the museum announced in a joint statement on its website Friday, June 28.

The "Confronting Hate Together" exhibit, which opened May 22, was produced in partnership with the Black Heritage Society of Washington State and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, "as a unified response and community call to action against the bias and bigotry that sow seeds of division and hate across communities."

But on May 19, 26 staff members signed a letter sent to museum leadership protesting a panel of the exhibit that compared anti-Zionism with antisemitism. When the exhibit opened, the staff walked out and stayed out on strike for seven days, returning May 29.

The museum has been closed for most of the past month and recently opened for limited hours Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"While we acknowledge the damage recent events have caused, our goal is to move forward, share this essential and timely exhibit with our communities, and begin to heal together," the museum statement said.

"We will relaunch Confronting Hate Together in solidarity. As always, we are unwaveringly committed to an exhibit that holds to its core message of confronting hate. We acknowledge the complexity of this deeply challenging work as we learn from each other. We ask for your continued grace and understanding as we navigate this process and express our deepest gratitude to our communities."

Steve McLean, spokesperson for the museum, said there continue to be conversations between staff and the exhibit partners about relaunching the exhibit in a new space. He added that there has been tremendous interest in the exhibit and that finding a bigger venue to accommodate that interest is one reason for the change.

"We have spent the time since the closure of the exhibit, or rather the postponement, doing some revision work, a lot of learning, a lot of education, working with the staff who had challenges and concerns," McLean said. "And really, really working with our partners to not only revise and make additions to the panels, but also explain and put some framing around what exactly happened and why it happened. We're making a bigger exhibit out of it, essentially."

📸 Featured Image: Looking down the main staircase of the Wing Luke Museum, June 22, 2008. Photo is attributed to Joe Mabel (under a Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 license).