| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores the intersection of cultural tourism, gentrification, and urban development in the neoliberal period by examining the complex and ambivalent relationship between an "ethnic-specific" cultural institution and a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Through a case study of the Museum of Chinese in America's (MoCA) profile, history, and community involvement in Manhattan's Chinatown, this article suggests that small to midsize ethnic-specific museums relate to the social and spatial transformations inherent in gentrification through a mechanism called gentrification consciousness. This mechanism helps to explain how an institution whose history, mission, and politics might indicate a resistance to gentrification is confounded and constrained by the larger neoliberal landscape. Offering little in the way of substantive alternative funding and space, neoliberal urban development touts tourism and culture as key routes to economic development with gentrification as a "natural" and beneficial by-product of such development for both the surrounding neighborhood and for individual cultural institutions. An analysis of the unique relationship of smaller ethnic-specific organizations to gentrification processes complicates discussions about museums and gentrification as well as potentially identifying methods and measures of institutional success that do not rely so heavily on neoliberal logics and policy prescriptions.
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