Endurance Streets (堅韌的街道): Resilience and Response in Boston’s Chinese Community

The exhibition “Endurance Streets 堅韌的街道: Resilience and Response in Boston’s Chinese Community” is a collaboration between the Chinese Historical Society of New England and Tisch College’s Program for Public Humanities at Tufts University. Created as a response to the economic distress and racially-motivated attacks impacting Boston’s Chinese-speaking neighborhood during the pandemic, this public-facing exhibition documents the past several years within this community and extends the narrative historically, bringing the struggles and the accomplishments of Chinatown over the past century into view.

The exhibition opened on September 15, 2022, and was extended through June 30, 2023. In total, twenty-eight bilingual panels are displayed at street level on two buildings here (Two Boylston Street and 116 Harrison Avenue, at the corner of Kneeland Street). The installation presents digitalized imagery and texts about the neighborhood’s current challenges and its cultural vibrancy, including panels that present the work of seven contemporary artists alongside archival material. Together they document a century of inequities, resilience, and activism, with a focus on housing, labor, and neighborhood identity.

Significant material is drawn from the collection of the Tunney F. Lee (1931-2020), architect, professor of urban planning at MIT, and tireless advocate for this community. His archive was recently bequeathed to the Chinese Historical Society of New England. The exhibition introduces this remarkable collection, the largest and most comprehensive documentation of Boston’s Chinatown, and provides an important opening for community dialogue.