CHINESE CULTURE FOUNDATION OF SAN FRANCISCO
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Mission Statement
The mission of the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco is to elevate the underserved and be a voice for equality. Rooted in San Francisco's Chinatown, CCC is a loud and creative voice to uplift social and economic transformation. CCC has a long history of presenting bold art with social transformation and community impact by sparking critical dialogues on equity. We provide a safe environment for artists who champion activism, resiliency, and healthy communities. In doing so, we shift dominant narratives, empower change, and reimagine our futures.
About This Cause
Founded in 1965, one year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, CCC emerged in a period that stands as a tremendous watershed for American democracy. For immigration policy, in response to the calls for racial equality that were the hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement, 1965 would be the year that the US would lift its restrictive quotas on Asian immigration. While the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act – the first restrictive immigration law that targeted a single nationality – was repealed in 1943, only 105 Chinese would be allowed entry per year. In 1965, the quota was raised to 20,000 to be on par with most other nations, which would forever change our community and our society. In this social context the Chinese Culture Foundation was founded as an organization that would communicate the humanity of our community through arts and culture. Eight years later, it would open its primary program site, the Chinese Culture Center in the then Holiday Inn at 750 Kearny Street, on the heels of dramatic changes in the relationship between US and China under the Nixon Administration. Notably, however, the opening of CCC was a landmark concession by the hotel developer to the growing movement in Chinatown over issues surrounding community land use and real estate development. Chinatown is one of America’s most important historical and cultural neighborhoods. At the frontier of immigrant rights and neighborhood preservation, Chinatown is a contributor to the City’s diversity through its intergenerational leadership, cross-sector collaborations, and commitment to racial equity. CCC is a space dedicated to the growth of artists to be the voice for the community. In our programming, we uplift to the forefront, voices of marginalized communities. CCC supports emerging artists, immigrant, refugee, QTPOC through: - Exhibition projects that spark dialogue on equality, justice, and global concerns while directly supporting marginalized artists; - Public art activations that reimagine SF Chinatown’s through transforming everyday spaces into artistic venues; - Community-based art projects that incubate artists to work in an environment that balance between experimentation and community engagement, while empowering community members to be creative agents through co-creation & participation. In its history of work, CCC, through its hundreds of exhibitions and public events presented to hundreds of thousands of audience and viewers, made significant strides in carrying forward its earlier mission to present and promote Chinese culture to an ever expanding audience both here in the US and internationally. It has a well-earned reputation as the organization that introduced and created a space for the work of contemporary artists from China, and in so doing, worked against the common perception that Chinese culture is quaint and kitschy. At the same time, CCC anchored a continually evolving arts community both here in Chinatown and the City at large. Beginning in 2009, CCC began to take bold initiatives that would bring the organization to new levels of achievement. With a curatorial perspective that integrated innovation, respect for tradition, a sense of the power of place, and a commitment to engagement with the local community, CCC embarked on a new course. Most notably, it began to seek opportunities throughout the neighborhood for the presentation of art, from Portsmouth Square as the “living room of Chinatown”, to vacant storefronts, to Chinatown’s network of alleyways, through which the community’s lifeblood flows. Moreover, CCC engaged artists steeped in a social practice approach to art-making such as the renowned Xu Tan of the ground-breaking Big Tail Elephant +collective that influenced the course of contemporary arts in China in the 1990s, installation artist and Chinese martial artist Justin Hoover, and installation artist Summer Mei-Ling Lee to work with residents and youth in fashioning “Our Town” as a shared creative vision in art.