Post #697363 by SandraDee on Thu, Oct 24, 2013 9:44 AM

Recently I was contacted by the National Museum of American History with the Smithsonian Institute via my personal thrifting blog with regards to my donating some mugs from The Mandarin to an upcoming exhibit entitled “Sweet and Sour: Chinese Food from Chinatown to Main Street.”

This exhibition tells a history of Chinese food and restaurants across the United States. Cecilia Chiang and her restaurant The Mandarin is an important part of their exhibition, since she ushered in a new era of Chinese food with a particular specialty from northern Chinese cuisine in the 1960s.

Although the exhibit blog has not been updated since August you can still read about the progress of this particular exhibition here: http://blog.americanhistory.si.edu/osaycanyousee/sweet-sour/

I know I have quite a few mugs from Chinese restaurants including all the ones from The Mandarin and by the looks of some of the posts on this thread so do some of you so that is why I posted this on this thread.

I am not sure when the exhibit will open but I do know that along with it a second exhibit will be placed in their traveling museum and made available to schools across the country--kind of like a museum tour bus.

The mugs I donated will appear in both exhibits and include the tall geisha mug and the green bucket.

[ Edited by: SandraDee 2013-10-24 09:47 ]