Saturday, February 14, 2026

Myth and Memory Take Flight at USC Pacific Asia Museum

Guided tour uses dragons, demons and guardian spirits to explore immigrant journeys through myth

Myth and migration converge in a guided exhibition tour at USC Pacific Asia Museum, inviting visitors to step into immigrant journeys rendered as dragons, demons, guardian spirits and a gold coin-spitting frog.​

On February 21, the museum’s “Exhibition Tours@PAM: Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry” offers an hourlong, in-person walkthrough of a major art show that recasts myth and folklore as lenses on displacement, memory and belonging.​​

The tour centers on “Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry,” described as “a major art exhibition that invites visitors on a journey through the immigrant experience via the visual language of mythology.”​​

Conceived by Los Angeles-based Korean American artist and muralist Dave Young Kim, it features work by more than 20 contemporary artists and draws on approximately 100 objects from the USC Pacific Asia Museum collection.​​

Its narrative is “written in verse in a voice evocative of a wise elder to a loved one.”​​

Visitors move through “a shadowy night crossing filled with demons,” “a homey rendition of an immigrant’s first apartment,” and “a gilded room spotlighting a gold Jin Chan frog that dispenses coins,” where “dragons, cranes, guardian spirits, and shapeshifters appear throughout as metaphors for internal states and intergenerational legacies.”

Exhibition Tours@PAM: Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry will run on Saturday, February 21, 2026, at 11 a.m. USC Pacific Asia Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena, California. For more information, call (626) 787-2680 or visit https://pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu/visit. Ticket prices: $15; free for PAM members and USC students with RSVP.