part two
THE STORYTELLING, THE LOOK
A personal journey through the development of San Francisco’s Bruce Lee exhibit. Read Part One HERE.
By Janice Lee, shades Magazine
The Storytelling
With the pandemic forcing everyone to stay indoors to curb the spread of the virus, CHSA Board Officer Jane Chin figured there was no better time to fully focus on the development of the Bruce Lee exhibit. Anti-Asian hate incidents were rapidly rising and everyone was turning to her about solutions. So she pushed the fast-forward button on the project. She saw the opportunity for someone as popular as Bruce Lee to help calm fears, as well as bring back and attract new people to Chinatown.
We did everything by phone, email, Google Drive and Zoom. What I learned about myself is that isolation helps me write better proposals. Years ago, I broke my leg and badly sprained my other one close to Christmas, cooped up in a hotel awaiting news from my health insurance company about a surgery that would enable me to walk again. It was during a crucial time in my nonprofit organization’s funding cycle and my boss was nervous about whether I could write the six-figure proposal in my condition and complete it by the deadline. After reading it, she said it was the best proposal I had written for the organization.
We knew our Bruce Lee exhibit idea was fundable. Jane arranged for meetings with every city arts and economic development department and received enthusiastic responses for the project to also bridge Asian-Black relations and neighborhoods.
So Jane shifted to the next big thing: Who is going to work on the exhibit and how would I pull this team together?
Two things were important for me:
- Gen X Chinese American men need to own the telling of Bruce Lee’s influence and appeal to their peers. Jane and I (two women on the mature side) could not be the ones to present this from our point of view.
- People of Color (not just Asian Americans) have to be involved in all aspects of this exhibit to produce an experience consistent with Bruce Lee’s value of opportunities for those who have not traditionally been allowed such.
Without funds, we doubted a curator would work on a promise of payment. We had to draw upon every relationship we had. If you knew who Bruce Lee was, we pulled you in for advice, feedback or to work on this project. (BTW: If you are one of those people reading this, thank you.) It is times like this that you rely on smart, talented and generous friends, family and colleagues. Good thing I know so many.
In late May 2020, Tom Lee called me to touch base as he occasionally does since we worked together for the Asian American Journalists Association 20 years ago. Among the topics over our hour-long-plus chat, I casually mentioned I was working on a Bruce Lee exhibit and how I hoped to shape it. Seeing my next door neighbor taken away in an ambulance after his death during the surge in COVID cases worldwide, the exhibit was not the biggest thing on my mind at the time, so it wasn’t the first thing I mentioned during our chat. I recall Tom being startled and commenting that I “buried the lede,” a term in journalism when a writer does not put the most important aspect first in a story. By the next day, he offered to volunteer to write the exhibit catalogue and recommended a colleague he worked with at the San Francisco Chronicle, visual journalist Christopher Fong, for publication and website design since the two of them work well together.
I had not considered using journalists to tell the story of Bruce Lee with my community concepts for the exhibit, but it made sense, especially since Tom is a seasoned and award-winning business writer and one theme would explore Bruce Lee as an entrepreneur. After also reviewing Chris’ design portfolio, Jane and I agreed to offer them the bigger assignment of writing and designing the exhibit. We knew this would be a big opportunity for them, as they each had their own Bruce Lee stories to unwrap.
Two Gen X Chinese American men, working professionals with immigrant Cantonese families, matched the profile I envisioned we should be targeting. Tom grew up in Boston, where he returned July 2023 as a business reporter with the Boston Globe. Before he arrived in the Bay Area in 2014 to become a business columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, he spent his career as a business reporter at The Seattle Times, St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He could bring perspective as a visitor from other cities. Chris had almost 20 years of experience as a graphic designer, art director and creative director including on publications and corporate exhibit displays. He is also sincerely dedicated to giving back to the San Francisco Chinatown community where his family has roots.
At this point, I kept adding to my laundry list of ideas and concepts, which looked like this on the first proposal:
Main Storyline: This new exhibit explores the boundaries of culture, creativity and fame through the lens of the legendary actor and martial artist. This is a story about challenging traditions and seizing opportunities. Visitors will learn about his development from a visionary to a pioneering entrepreneur and his immortal influence on future generations.
Themes:
- Bridging of East and West cultures
- Chinese American history including father’s immigration from Guangdong
- The family tree
- -SF Chinatown 1940 (year of Bruce’s birth)
- Asian American style 1950s, including Bruce as cha cha champion
- Asian Americans in Hollywood 1960s, including exoticism, emasculation, Yellowface actors and stereotyped portrayals
- The importance of philosophy for developing vision
- Traditional Chinese martial arts and mixed martial arts, including studying under master Ip Man, Jeet Kune Do (Bruce’s brand) and the One-Inch Punch
- Hong Kong movie industry 1970s (during his film career there) and its production of Asian American stars until today (such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li)
- -Bruce Lee Foundation and Cinemax’s “Warrior” (Bruce’s unfinished business)
- Breaking cultural barriers by working with other communities and people of color
- Proud Asian American men as top stars and sex symbols today (such as Daniel Dae Kim, John Cho, Henry Golding)
Tom simplified and categorized the themes in the second proposal draft. With his business reporting experience, he researched and learned details about the production company that Bruce Lee founded with Hong Kong film magnate Raymond Chow. There is also a famous “My Definite Chief Aim” letter that Bruce Lee wrote in 1969 where he states he will be “the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States” and “live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.” With those two bits of information, Tom had enough to shape the storyline that would appeal to anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Read Tom’s book (published in April), “The Bruce Lee Code: How the Dragon Mastered Business, Confidence & Success,” for his analysis of Bruce Lee’s business strategies and mindset.
Tom and Chris met with the collectors and combed through volumes of books and 50 years of memorabilia to determine the best way to tell this story. Books and biopics documented Bruce Lee’s life chronologically. Bruce Lee’s limited time in San Francisco and Oakland was already well documented in Charles Russo’s 2016 book, “Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America.” So instead, they organized the story into “personas” of the Bruce Lee they grew up seeing and details they researched.
Most of us agreed that focusing on his influence and inspiration would make for a more interesting visitor experience and bring out Bruce Lee’s unique contributions. After review and input from his daughter, Shannon, the storyline themes for the exhibit became defined as:
EXHIBITION FEATURES
The “We Are Bruce Lee: Under the Sky, One Family” exhibition will be organized around different aspects of his persona, with rarely seen works such as his drawings and handwritten letters, historic photos, memorabilia, video clips, new works by emerging filmmakers, and technology to create graphically stunning and immersive experiences:
▪ Bruce Lee: The Visionary. He was a bold visionary and an entrepreneur ahead of his time. He pitched original ideas for Hollywood to expand its portrayal of Asians, but he was met with challenges and had a remarkable comeback at the end of his life.
▪ Bruce Lee: The Athlete. Universally recognized for the mass popularization of martial arts in America, he created a signature style of discipline, grace, strength, and power of mind and body.
▪ Bruce Lee: The Unifier. He embraced working with people of different cultures and backgrounds. Today, Black athletes, actors, and hip hop artists attribute him for inspiring them.
▪ Bruce Lee: The Thinker. He was a student of philosophy, centering himself and sharing his values. His letters, poems, ideas, and sketches preserved by his family illustrate the path of how all of us can express ourselves and visualize our future.
The Look
Chris Fong immediately started with the branding, including creating a style guide, logo, exhibition title and website.
For the logo, he used yellow and black, the colors most closely tied to the famous “Game of Death” track suit. With the two colors divided by an upward angle, this symbolized 金山 (phonetically “Gim Saan”), translated “Gold Mountain,” the name associated with Chinese immigration from Guangdong to San Francisco beginning the later part of the 19th century for the California Gold Rush. In Chris’ words of how the logo captured the essence of Bruce Lee:
Visually, while the logo is a simplistic and abstraction of the Yin-Yang symbol, it really distilled what the exhibit is about with balance and upward mobility. Lee’s upward climb against adversity while balancing cultures and worlds – Chinese/American, America/Hong Kong, Hong Kong/Hollywood, Traditional Kung Fu/Martial Arts, etc. Pictorially, using the well-associated colors of Bruce Lee, the golden-yellow “hill” represented Lee’s birth home of San Francisco (“Gold Mountain” in Chinese).
For the title, I wanted to express that some aspect of Bruce Lee lives in all of us, as a way to not fixate on a famous person but instead focus on his impact on the visitor. My first thought was “I Am Bruce Lee,” but I saw that was the title of a 2012 documentary. Chris refined the idea and developed the title we eventually used, “We Are Bruce Lee: Under the Sky, One Family,” based on a 1971 TV interview where Bruce Lee was asked if he thought of himself as Chinese or American and responded, “Under the sky, under the heaven, there is but one family.”
I enlisted Barcelon Jang Architecture to work with us on the space planning of the exhibit design. The firm, which specialized in cultural and community facilities, won a National Trust for Historic Preservation award for converting the historic Julia Morgan-designed YWCA into CHSA’s museum and learning center in 2000. Besides, we were stuck at home during the pandemic and my husband, Wayne Barcelon of BJA, had to listen to endless exhibit details. In isolation, Bruce Lee was the talk at our breakfasts, the subject of every phone call and Zoom meeting, and my last text to Jane every night as we strategized donor approaches or worked out how to troubleshoot all the unexpected problems. Yes, there were that many.
About the exhibition design, Chris said:
While the design of the exhibit changed quite a bit during its development, we initially wanted the exhibit experience to be both immersive and educational. CHSA is a cultural and educational institution in San Francisco.
With the persona ideas in place, Tom and I wanted to peel the layers of Bruce Lee and have the visitor enter deeper into his inner motives and thoughts from his most exterior persona as a movie star/brand (the most projected public-facing persona), his entrepreneur persona which supported the brand, his physical being then into his mind that ran his other three personas from his thought processes, and personal philosophies which were all captured in his personal correspondence and journaling.
Throughout this exhibit journey, we also wanted to have individuals develop their own sense of self through writing Bruce Lee-like affirmations, a fitness regiment, and overcoming adversity in (one’s own) personal and professional life.
Through Jane’s connections, she had been in discussions with Linda Cheu of AECOM, who encouraged us to go beyond traditional display walls to engage visitors, as she saw the trend of popular exhibits across the country introduce different ways of storytelling to new audiences.
Linda introduced us to Matthew Solari of BRC Imagination Arts, a global production company specializing in innovative experiential storytelling such as Stories Of The Bible in Washington, D.C., and The Circle Room at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. When we perhaps needed it most, Matt kept us focused on the visitor experience, suggested tweaks, and provided affirmation that we were moving in the right direction. As the only one who worked with me on this project who was not a Person of Color, he respected my request for a Chinese American-led team. You don’t really know how someone will receive a request like this, especially if they are established professionals with credentials at the top of their industry. I’m sure Jane was holding her breath when I mentioned this at our first meeting with Matt. But he reacted with such understanding and kindness. I will never forget that later during the height of anti-Asian violence in the news, Matt was the first to tell us he was thinking of us and wished for our safety.
Chris led the design with an open mind, having to incorporate or nix all kinds of ideas. One of his own early design ideas was a stunning lighted wall of color 35mm negatives from Bruce Lee’s films, which was placed near the beginning of the exhibit to draw visitors. Another exhibit feature was a wall of Bruce Lee magazine covers from Jeff’s collection, showcasing his international fame and broad appeal. Perhaps our biggest original acquisition was the work bench that Bruce Lee actually used for fitness training. This was given to Jeff by Bob Gomez, a self-defense instructor who had the equipment for many years in his gym without much interest from his students, for some unknown reason.
Chris and Wayne worked out sight lines from every angle of the main exhibition floor. Since Chris was based in Seattle and never had a chance to visit the museum until the day the exhibit opened to the public, their discussions supported each other. What would visitors see upon entering the space? What would the flow be between personas and incorporating digital displays of film clips and interviews? How high do the walls need to be? What would they see looking back from an elevated gallery in the museum?
Persistent in our thoughts and the source of many discussions: If we were going to give visitors a powerful experience, what would that look like? And what could we actually do on a nonprofit budget?
Read the other installments:
In Part One: We Are Bruce Lee
In Part Three: The Technology, The Artists and The Launch