Community Outreach Exhibit

We Are From Vietnam: Family Immigration Stories from Austin, Texas
June 4 through July 20 at the Austin Children's Museum.

The Museum is excited to announce its latest Community Outreach Exhibit, We are From Vietnam: Family Immigration Stories From Austin, Texas at the Austin Children's Museum on display from June 4th through July 20th. See www.austinkids.org for museum hours and driving directions.

 

This community outreach is part of the Museum's exhibition in development on historical immigration through Galveston titled,  Forgotten Gateway: Coming to America Through Galveston Island, set to open in the spring of 2009.

Every immigrant who has made America their home has a story to tell — about the reasons why they immigrated, the hardships of their journey, the challenges of living in a new place, and the dreams they hold for the future. Often, these stories are preserved and shared from generation to generation.

The artwork in this exhibit was created by second- and fifth-grade students from the Vietnamese Culture Program at Walnut Creek Elementary School in Austin.

They interviewed their parents and grandparents about their family immigration stories, then retold these experiences through illustrations and story boxes, using objects, letters, and images to portray the richness and diversity of the Vietnamese American community in Texas.

The comic-style illustrations were created in the spring and fall of 2006 by two second-grade classes. During the fall of 2006, Ritu Khanduri, a graphic illustrator and immigrant, helped the students understand the power of telling stories through images and words.

The story boxes were created in the spring of 2007 by fifth-grade students. Visual artist Sandra Fernandez, also an immigrant, helped the students craft these story boxes to represent their families' immigration experiences.

We are From Vietnam, a program and student exhibit, is a collaboration between The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and Texas Folklife, a statewide cultural arts organization based in Austin. These projects are part of the community outreach for an exhibition in development by the Texas State History Museum on historical immigration through Galveston titled, Forgotten Gateway: Coming to America Through Galveston Island.

This work is made possible in part through the generous support of a "We the People" Planning Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The program was also funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that “a great nation deserves great art.”