SEATTLE, DAY 7: NOV 5, 2015 (THU). Museums Thursday

ADDRESS (SOUTH LAKE UNION): 500 Westlake Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
MAP: https://goo.gl/maps/ARQoXYAX8vE2
TEL: 206-621-2045 

MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND INDUSTRY (MOHAI)  

The reason of visiting this museum was as follows;

1. Benzos Center for Innovation
2. The Legacy of Seattle Hip Hop

#1 was located on the entire back side of the main floor, and one of the major exhibition. As imagined by the name, #1 was majorly funded by the donation of Jeff Benzos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. Although there were many exhibitions about Amazon, a variety of Seattle innovation was evenly spotlighted with pride from old to new, and from unknown to popular. If you’re dreaming about a great innovator like me, it is a must see. You will learn innovation is not only a sweet dream, but also causes a lot of risk, pain, fear, and fail. When you stuck with your innovation ideas, this is the place you should flashback. All those interesting exhibitions were nothing complicated but efficiently displayed.

Regarding #2, many people would possibly imagine about the recent big hit of “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj and its original root of “Baby Got Back” by a Seattle native, Sir Mix-A-Lot. He still involved in local music scene a lot, including previously introduced Ayron Jones and The Way. How many people knew he was known with other songs before “Baby Got Back”…? I thought it couldn’t be denied the 2014 smash hit contributed to set up that special exhibition, too. While Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were also from there, Seattle wasn’t exactly a popular hip-hop city. My impression was Seattle was rather an edgy rock city. Still Seattle had one of the biggest black population in the Pacific Northwest, about 8% of entire city population and maybe 10% including suburban, they created unique, one and only hip-hop underground. The displays weren’t that much as widely advertised in the city, I could learn the history of Seattle hip hop scene efficiently.

MOHAI was also a good place to learn about Seattle history. The second floor had very substantial collections of Seattle history and industry development. Those exhibitions gave me an impression that Seattle’s development was pretty much caused by fear of possible economic decline by surrounding areas where had the better geographical advantage. Oregon Trail went to Portland, OR, but not to Seattle (and yes, I saw Portland was definitely much older on next day). Railroads were built from south or east, but they ended up in Tacoma or Everette because Seattle was further inland and bothered by Lake Washington. Port of Tacoma was more developed than Seattle (Tacoma still has bigger port than Seattle). Therefore, Seattle had to make their own roads or railroads connecting with Oregon, Tacoma or Everett, created canal connecting Lake Washington, Lake Union, and ocean, etc. It was interesting to know that the biggest city of Pacific Northwest was created by a lot of hard working from the geographical disadvantage because I thought Seattle had a lot of advantages! I thought the hard working and ideas to avoid Seattle from ruin was also innovation in its history. I took about 2 hours to see the whole museum. It was a wonderful museum.

ADDRESS: 860 Terry Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
MAP: https://goo.gl/maps/sgJvAUPHjkG2
TEL: 206-324-1126

CLASSIC SIR MIX-A-LOT (“Mac-Daddy” album)…          

…AND UPDATED NICKI MINAJ (“Pink Print” album)

          
SEATTLE INNOVATION SOUND, BEFORE NIRVANA AND PEARL JAM…MOTHER LOVE BONE!(“Apple” album)

NORTHWEST AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM

This museum was located in Central District, so called Seattle’s black neighborhood. I put “so called” because it wasn’t really black neighborhood anymore. My impression was the area was pretty much racially mixed area.

Although the museum was small with only first floor of 3 story former school building, all exhibitions were pretty good. I needed more time to see the whole museum than expected. The museum had many displays of entire black history in Pacific Northwest and Idaho, beautiful orchard themed collections by Debora Moore, and “The Atomic Frontier: Black Life In Hanford”, black people’s contribution to the nuclear bomb production site located 220 miles southeast of Seattle near Pasco. I caught my attention that black history was pretty different between Washington State and Oregon. While Washington lifted up segregation in early 20th century, Oregon kept until pretty recent. That caused black population migration. Oregon used to have bigger black population in 1870 (PDX=149, SEA=only 13!) and 1900 (PDX=775, SEA=406), by 1943 Seattle had bigger black population (PDX=3000, SEA=7000), and in 2000, Seattle had 4,7541 black population while Portland had 3,5115. When I left museum, a docent named Zachary told me that was not much changed even now. 

NORTHWEST AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM: http://www.naamnw.org/