Letter to Jon Parrish Reede, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities - In the wake of the devastating fire in Chinatown Museum, Schumer urges National Endowment for the Humanities to award an emergency grant to the Museum of Chinese in America; emergency funds will aid museum in recovery efforts after fire damaged up to 85,000 artifacts

Letter

Dear Chairman Peede,

I write to request that you provide your personal attention to the application by the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) for a "Chairman's Emergency Grant" from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Last month, MOCA was devastated by a fire in its museum storage building at 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan. Curatorial staff from MOCA are still assessing the full extent of the damage to the museum's archives, but there is every reason to believe that a significant portion of it has been significantly damaged, at best, and permanently lost, at worst.

Founded in 1980 as the Chinatown History Project, MOCA has evolved to become an international resource for scholarly research, cross-cultural understanding, and general education about the history of Chinese in America. The museum's collection includes more than 85,000 artifacts, which are accessed daily by academics, documentarians, journalists, students, and the general public.

As you know, a "Chairman's Emergency Grant" may be used by museums for "activities such as drying, cleaning, and packing humanities collections, transferring artifacts to temporary storage, or consulting with conservators and preservation professionals," all of which are appropriate and necessary for MOCA to undertake in the wake of the fire.

Given the rich legacy of contributions by Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans to our nation, I ask that you prioritize MOCA's application for emergency funding that will help recover and restore this unparalleled historic archive. Over the longer term, I hope that you and your staff can also continue to work with MOCA to develop a joint strategy to enhance MOCA's resiliency through the full digitization of its archives, fireproofing its facilities, and other similar efforts.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Source