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The Chicago Cultural Alliance is a partnership of Chicago's ethnic museums and cultural centers. Its first partner organizations were  the Chicago History Museum, The Field Museum and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum , it has grown to an organization with twenty four Core Members, including the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society, and twelve Partner Institutions. The goal of the Alliance is to develop collaborative programs and projects among its Core Members and Partner Institutions.

http://www.chicagoculturalalliance.org/

The Chicago Japanese American Historical Society (CJAHS) is a partner with the Discover Nikkei Project.  Discover Nikkei is a website about Japanese migrants and their descendants,  known as Nikkei.  There are 2.6 to 3 million people of Japanese descent living outside of Japan, most settling in the Americas.  

Through our association with Discover Nikkei, the CJAHS is part of a dynamic group of educational, cultural and community-based organizations from Japan, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States in a collective effort to preserve and share the Nikkei experience. The CJAHS has developed and contributed materials to the Discover Nikkei Website since 2005. The Discover Nikkei Website Project is coordinated by the National Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles and is funded by the Nippon Foundation.

For more information about the Discover Nikkei Website, please visit: 

   http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/ 

   Chicago Japanese American Historical Society section 

   Voices of Chicago Section 

The CJAHS has been an active partner in the Field Museum’s Cultural Connections program since its inception in the late 1990s. Cultural Connections is a unique educational program that encourages understanding and appreciation of Chicago’s rich cultural diversity through the application of an anthropological framework, “common concerns, different responses.”  The CJAHS developed programs such as “Obon and Day of the Dead” with the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, “Swedish and Japanese Fairy Tales” with the Swedish American Museum Center, “The Art of Writing” with the Spertus Museum of the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, “Kirigami and Wycinaki:  Paper Art Forms in Context” with the Polish Museum of America, “Taiko and Indian Drumming” with the American Indian Center, and “From Sky to Earth-Star Quilts and Origami Cranes” with Mitchell Museum of the American Indian.

The "Chicago is Home" kimono-shaped quilt was designed and stitched by a group of local Japanese American women. The quilt depicts their life stories before and during WWII and after their resettlement in Chicago in the post war years. Personal photographs, the Chicago skyline, and calligraphy “On the Path of New Hope” are among the images used to illustrate how Chicago became their home. This hand crafted artifact has been displayed in Chicago and on the West Coast.

CJAHS in collaboration with The Field Museum brought “Strength and Diversity” to Chicago during January to March 1995.  This exhibit, developed by the National Japanese American Historical Society and The Oakland Museum, traveled under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES).  CJAHS presented teacher workshops and developed a book of practical lesson plans for use in conjunction with the exhibit.