Smithsonian launches fundraising campaign for gallery for AAPI history, art and culture.

IRENE HIRANO INOUYE

To help fill in the Grand Canyon-like gap in American history and culture, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC) has announced the launch of a campaign to have a gallery on the National Mall devoted to the Asian American experience.

The Irene Hirano Inouye Memorial Fund honors the center’s late board chair who dreamed of creating the gallery as a permanent exhibit for AAPI history, art and culture in the nation's capitol.

Asian American and Pacific Islander Americans have been critical contributors to the American story for nearly 200 years. Despite this long history, the AAPI narrative has been in many instances untold or invisible.

“Irene always understood how critical it was for these narratives to be told throughout the Smithsonian,” said Lisa Sasaki, the director of the center. “She dedicated her life to elevating Asian Pacific American stories as the founding president and CEO of both the Japanese American National Museum and the U.S.-Japan Council and as the board chair of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.”

Through the fund, APAC will continue to carry on Inouye’s vision and belief that cross-cultural understanding and celebrating Asian Pacific Americans make the country richer and the Smithsonian stronger. Endowing the center’s directorship secures this vision, bringing to life a much-needed space for learning, discovery, creation and national visibility for Asian Pacific America.

I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story, at the National Museum of American History. Taking Filipino American author Carlos Bulosan’s poem as inspiration, this is one of the exhibits created by the Smithsonian APAC telling the stories of the builders and workers of Asian Pacific America.

“We are so honored that the Smithsonian has created this memorial fund,” said Jennifer Hirano on behalf of Irene Hirano Inouye’s family. “The intent of the fund perfectly encapsulates the legacy that my mother hoped to leave.”

Inouye was the founding president & CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which she led for three decades (1988–2008). 

At the Smithsonian, she served on the Smithsonian National Board and on the boards of the National Museum of American History and APAC. In 2010, Inouye co-founded, along with her husband, the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, the U.S. Japan Council. She served as the founding chair of the board of advisors for the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies at UCLA from 2012 until her death in April 2020.

Established in 1997, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center is a museum without walls that presents innovative, community-centered museum experiences throughout the United States and beyond. 

To donate or for more information about the fund, the public can visit the center’s website. Follow the Center on Twitter and Instagram: @SmithsonianAPA.