Seattle sculpture honoring 1886 Chinese expulsion hits funding goal

A public art project more than two decades in the making cleared its final financial hurdle last week, paving the way for the fabrication of a bronze sculpture at the site where Seattle’s Chinese community was violently driven from the city in 1886.

The Chinese American Legacy Artwork Project (CALAP), managed by the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, announced that it had reached its $500,000 fundraising target on April 28. The breakthrough came when two international donors matched a $50,000 challenge grant that the Seattle FIFA World Cup 26 local organizing committee, SeattleFWC26, had issued last November.

The donors were Martin Mao, a Chinese Australian moved by the story, and Li Lu, founder of Himalaya Capital and one of the student protest leaders at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The sculpture, titled “Exclusion, Expulsion, Expunge,” was designed by Seattle artist Stewart Wong. It features six life-size figures flanking a 14-foot stainless-steel “X” — three representing Chinese laborers and three representing mob members — with scales of justice, composed of firearms, tipped toward the mob.

On Feb. 7, 1886, a crowd of approximately 1,500 people swept through Seattle’s Chinatown, forcing around 350 Chinese immigrants from their homes before marching most onto the steamship Queen of the Pacific. The expulsion followed passage of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first federal law to bar immigration based on race or nationality.

The sculpture is proposed for Occidental Park in Pioneer Square, near where the forced march to the waterfront began. University of Washington teaching professor Connie So said the location carries layered meaning for Asian communities broadly. “All ethnic and racial communities in Seattle all lived east of Occidental Street,” So said, as per NW Asian Weekly, arguing the site reflects a shared history of displacement that extended beyond the Chinese community alone.

With federal and state-level pressures on immigrant narratives intensifying, museum civic engagement specialist Wren Wheeler framed the project in explicitly political terms. “I am now realizing that preserving history is resistance,” she said.

A permit application has been submitted to the Seattle Department of Transportation. The proposal still requires approval from the Pioneer Square Preservation Board before installation can begin.