A haunting by the ghost of artist Miné Okubo, as played by novelist Karen Tei Yamashita. An “EDscape Room,” a mystery in the form of a room, designed by detective novelist Ed Lin. “Care pods,” reciprocal mentoring groups that deepen relationships between literary writers, scholars, and editors. These are just a few of the possibilities of bringing literature off the page and into the museum–the focus of my work as a curator for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC) since 2015. Museums have historically ignored literature as an art form, but because it has played such a central role in Asian American communities–and American cultural life writ large–I have long believed the Smithsonian needs to share in the responsibility of its stewardship. In 2017, I dreamed up the Asian American Literature Festival (AALF), a new model of festival premised on fair pay, shared commitments to justice, and cooperative-building–in APAC’s case, with the Library of Congress, Poetry Foundation, and arts and community organizations across the country. Co-governed by a collective, AALF is unique to both the Smithsonian and the literary world.

I hope it offers a glimpse of possible futures for our Institution: not more literary per se, but attentive to ethical stewardship of arts and culture more broadly. The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare how many of our fields and sectors are locked into inherited systems, pinned under low horizons of survival. AALF insists upon fair pay for all authors because almost no U.S. literary festivals do so, and of course the literary arts doesn't have the market cornered on these kinds of "this is how we've always done it / how we have to do it" practices. I’m proud to be part of an Institution actively seeking to enable bigger and more equitable dreaming. And what better place than a museum to remind us that our cultural treasures are ours, plural? Our Institution can lead processes of stewardship precisely by uplifting others, opening access, and building expansive networks of collective decision-making and care.