First Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Exhibition at the National Museum of American History Explores Stockton’s Little Manila
The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC) will open its next exhibition, “How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories,” Nov. 20 at the Nicholas F. and Eugenia Taubman Gallery in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. This marks APAC’s first exhibition at the museum and is its signature program for the Smithsonian’s celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial, “Our Shared Future: 250.” The exhibition explores the history of Filipino American migration, labor and community-building in Stockton, California—once home to the largest Filipino community outside the Philippines—from the 1910s to the 1970s.
“How Can You Forget Me” is anchored by more than 50 artifacts recovered from a trove of steamer trunks discovered in 2005 in the basement of the Daguhoy fraternal lodge in Stockton’s Little Manila district. The exhibition features three of these trunks as both literal containers and symbolic vessels, revealing valuable insights into how Filipino migrants lived, worked, loved and built community. One of the three trunks was donated to the museum in 2022 by the Stockton-based nonprofit Little Manila Rising, which works to preserve the city’s Filipino American heritage and legacy…