Explore the second run of this past exhibit with stories sourced from the local Burmese / Myanmar community.

With the original exhibit run cut short due to our closure during the pandemic, we’ve taken the opportunity to update the exhibit to include new content covering the military coup that happened in February 2021.

This Burmese community shares the rich and diverse stories of who they are, where they came from, and their emerging identity as Burmese Americans. Although their ancestral homeland is known as Burma or Myanmar, their stories have more than just two sides – their diversity defies a simple definition of who they are as Burmese Americans. The Burmese American community is made up of multiple ethnicities, many languages, various cultural and food traditions, and those who practice different faiths and religions. Despite geo-political oppression and division, they take pride in our complex diversity and commitment to come together as a community in their new home in America.

On February 1, 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, people in Burma/Myanmar at home and abroad woke up to the news of a military coup. Early that morning, before the streets in Yangon began to be busy and bustling, the military arrested Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who won the November 2020 general elections.

The community behind this exhibit wanted to shed light on how things are in Myanmar, making sure to highlight the resistance --Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) -- and how people of Burma/Myanmar in the country and across the diaspora have been experiencing the most difficult moment of their lives in the face of a military coup, a global pandemic, and the resulting economic turmoil.