The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience isn’t the easiest place to find, but if you persevere in your search for 719 South King Street in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District — and park for free under I-5 a couple of blocks away — you’ll be rewarded not only with an extraordinary museum, but also with a tour of a historic hotel that will leave you feeling as if you’ve been time-travelling as you climb back down the stairs to the street. But wait! There’s still one more treat in store.

The museum is named for an immigrant who came from China to Seattle in 1930 at six years of age, made peace with a gradeschool bully by drawing comic strips in which the bully was a superhero, served in the Army, earned a law degree, and became a Seattle city councilman — the first Asian American to hold elected office in the Pacific Northwest. Wing Luke died much too young in a plane crash in 1965, but his vision of a place to present the history and the contemporary experience of Asian Americans lives on at the museum named in his honor.

The only difficulty you’ll have at The Wing — its nickname — is deciding in what order to see everything. Hotel tours, which are included in the price of admission, are timed, so your first decision will be whether to take the tour earlier or later in your visit, which deserves a full day, with a break for dim sum at a nearby restaurant to ward off museum fatigue.
In addition to the historic hotel on the top floor, the museum has a first and a second floor with a mezzanine between the two. On the first floor you’ll find the New Dialogue Initiative, where, until November 12, you can reflect on education within Asian Pacific American communities at “Schooled,” and the special exhibition gallery, where you can check out a show called “From Fields to Family: Asian Pacific Americans and Food” until June 17.

The first floor is also home to the Community Hall, a space for large gatherings where the small but lovely exhibit “Our Heritage, Our Journey, Our Dreams” is housed, and the Tateuchi Story Theatre, where the historic hotel tour begins. Last but not least, there’s the Marketplace, should you want to take a little bit of the museum home with you.

The Ping and Ruby Chow & Family Gathering Space & Learning Studio on the mezzanine is worth a peek on your way to the second floor, where you’ll find a stunning permanent collection called “Honoring Our Journey.” From immigration history to contemporary challenges facing Seattle’s Asian-American community, this exhibit is a must-see.

Also on the second floor are the George Tsutakawa Art Gallery — where “Dual Nature: Contemporary Glass and Jewelry,” a show of works in glass and jewelry/metalsmithing by eight artists, is on display until January 2012 — the Community Portrait Galleries, and two spaces dedicated to youth: the Frank Fujii Youth Space with exhibits from The Wing’s youth programs, and KidPLACE, featuring interactive exhibits for the museum’s young visitors. In addition, two spaces known as the East Lightwell and the West Lightwell offer a place for reflection on all this information and beauty.

The guided historic hotel tour may be your strongest memory of the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Look into every corner, ask every question that occurs to you, immerse yourself in this visit to another time, then return to contemporary Chinatown, for The Wing is the present as well as the past.
To learn more, call (206) 623-5124 or visit <www.wingluke.org>.