Project Brief

The goal of this project was to take a misunderstood issue and design a solution to address those miscommunications. I was part of a group of two other people, Layla Dev and Sara Lin. We decided to create a museum exhibit on the Model Minority Myth, a stereotype that labels Asian Americans as hardworking, intelligent, and law-abiding citizens. We focused on this topic in particular because the three of us are Asian American ourselves, and none of us had opportunities to learn about our histories in high school or college. We also wanted to develop our skills in exhibition design, since we didn’t have any prior experience beforehand. We wanted to place the focus of the exhibit on college-aged Asian Americans so our audience could have a first-hand account on some of our collective experiences.

Research

We conducted research on the origins of the Model Minority stereotype and Asian American history pre-1960s. We visited our campus’s Asian American Cultural Center and talked to some of the staff about previous presentations that they've created for the community to get a better idea of how to organize our information. From there, we divided our exhibit into three sections:

• a timeline of Asian American history
• large images of the people that we interviewed with pulled quotes
• an interactive wall for museum participants

Exhibit Layout & Planning

Early Versions