National Museum of Asian Art Announces 2024 Arts and Culture Festival Dedicated to Well-Being in the Asian American Community | Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has announced its 2024 May Arts and Culture Festival. From May 10 to May 12, the museum will host pop-ups, performances, discussions and other programs that draw upon the role of the museum as a space of gathering, learning and contemplation to honor and celebrate the cultures of the Middle East, Asia and America’s Asian American communities. This is the second festival in a five-year initiative sponsored by Bank of America for annual celebrations during Asian American and Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. All events are free of charge. More details on the May 2024 festival programming will be announced in the coming weeks. The public can follow #TheNext100 and @NatAsianArt for details about the events, including those that require tickets and registration.

This year, the museum will feature arts and culture programming dedicated to well-being in the Asian American community. The weekend-long festival aims to create dialogue around and bring awareness to often overlooked issues, stories and practices around mental health and wellness in Asian diasporic experiences. Activities like mindfulness practices will be integrated alongside arts and cultures resources that support mental health. Programming also includes panel discussions, interactive experiences, culinary pop-ups and art-making projects.

The museum’s partnership with Bank of America greatly expands the National Museum of Asian Art’s public programming, both within its galleries and on the National Mall, ensuring that Asian arts and culture reach the broadest possible audiences. Last year’s two-week festival commemorated the museum’s centennial and drew more than 40,000 people.

Health and Wellness Initiatives

This festival is the latest example of the National Museum of Asian Art’s portfolio in health and wellness work.

Other initiatives include: 

• Free online meditation sessions every Tuesday and Friday
• “Artful Movement,” a virtual program developed in partnership with the non-profit children’s yoga organization Create Calm that combines mindful movement with slow looking at art for students in pre-K–sixth grade
• Exhibitions and publications that speak to health and wellness such as:

Sponsor

Bank of America is the Founding Sponsor of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art’s May Arts and Culture Festival.

About the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art is committed to preserving, exhibiting, researching and interpreting art in ways that deepen our collective understanding of Asia, the United States and the world. Home to more than 46,000 objects, the museum stewards one of North America’s largest and most comprehensive collections of Asian art, with works dating from antiquity to the present from China, Japan, Korea, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Islamic world. Its rich holdings bring the arts of Asia into direct dialogue with an important collection of 19th- and early 20th-century art from the United States, providing an essential platform for creative collaboration and cultural exchange between the U.S., Asia and the Middle East.  

Beginning with a 1906 gift that paved the way for the museum’s opening in 1923, the National Museum of Asian Art is a leading resource for visitors, students and scholars in the United States and internationally. Its galleries, laboratories, archives and library are located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and are part of the world’s largest museum complex, which typically reports more than 27 million visits each year. The museum is free and open to the public 364 days a year (closed Dec. 25), making its exhibitions, programs, learning opportunities and digital initiatives accessible to global audiences.  

# # #

SI-119-2024