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.