St. Paul’s Hmong Cultural Center expands

Almost 50 years after Minnesota welcomed its first Hmong immigrants, the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul is celebrating its growth — and looking to the future.

The center, which has served as a hub of Hmong heritage since its establishment in 1992, held an open house last week to showcase an 800-square-foot expansion to its first-floor museum, now more than 2,000 square feet. The center is closed temporarily for yet more improvements.

The museum’s growth has been gradual. Initially housed in a modest three-room space, it expanded to 1,200 square feet in 2021, despite delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and an act of vandalism to its storefront. With the recent expansion, the museum has nearly doubled in size, enhancing its mission to preserve and celebrate Hmong culture and traditions.

The Hmong began arriving in Minnesota in 1975 after the devastation of their homelands in Laos during the Vietnam War. The Twin Cities is now home to more than 94,000 people of Hmong heritage, representing one of the largest such populations in the United States.

“Young Hmong who were educated in the U.S. were beginning to forget their heritage,” said TxongPao Lee, the Hmong Cultural Center’s executive director. “Without these traditions, there would be no Hmong identity.”

At the open house, the center showcased the museum’s improvements, including new track lighting in all exhibit areas, a larger gift shop, additional security and a new museum logo. “We felt the museum was most important for people to come and learn,” Lee said.

The expansion has been supported by various funding sources, including a $288,000 grant from the Legacy Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, a $70,000 grant from the McKnight Foundation, a $50,000 grant from the Freeman Foundation and a $49,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C.

In addition to the museum, the center hosts an upstairs library where the original Hmong Cultural Center was located. It offers a comprehensive collection of Hmong scholarly literature, including dissertations about Hmong history and intergenerational trauma, 200 books about folk tales, funeral rites, and courting songs, and more than 300 bilingual storybooks in Hmong, English, Somali and Karen.

The updated museum features a new exhibit of photographs by James E. Williams of Hmong culture in Laos in the late 1960s, with images of traditional Hmong clothing, farming, New Year’s celebrations, and everyday life.

“The original goal was to preserve our traditional ceremonies, music and arts for future generations,” Lee said.

Their dedication is evident in annual events like the Qeej and Hmong Arts Festival, which celebrates the traditional bamboo pipe instrument and Hmong arts and crafts. ”Next year is going to be our 50th anniversary of the refugees from Laos coming to the state and we will have an open house inviting more people to come see what we have here,” Lee said. “The most important thing is that we’re going to do the Qeej Festival in May. As the Hmong escaped from Laos to China and came to the United States, we were still able to save some art forms and Hmong folk songs.”

Over time, the center has expanded its programs to include English as a Second Language classes, citizenship classes and educational presentations about Hmong history.

“It took quite some time to have the reputation for people to come to the classes,” Lee said. “We have good programs and teachers for students to come learn to read and write so they can find a job. Then people refer to us by word of mouth.”

The center faced challenges during the pandemic, limiting in-person visits to 15 people at a time and adapting its programs online. “We had resources available on our website, and we moved our ESL and citizenship classes to Zoom,” Lee said.

Despite these hurdles, its dedication to Minnesota’s Hmong community remained steadfast.

“We have people who really need us to expand,” Lee said. “Myself and the board did not want to rush. We needed to slowly and steadily expand the way our people and community wanted.”

The center is now undergoing a second phase of expansion through the rest of the year and into 2025. This phase aims to improve accessibility by connecting the first-floor museum with the second-floor library.

“We will add a direct entrance to the museum from the elevator, making it easier for visitors to access all parts of the center,” Lee said. “After they have that completed, we will be able to open it for the general public so they can come in and see the museum.”