A Message from Brad Engdahl ASI Board Chair
The past year has been one of pain and struggle mixed with hope and opportunity.
the Atlantic how to speak Swedish. ASI’s staff and volunteers turned crisis into success.
The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted, among other things, health and economic damage across our communities, especially on those who are most vulnerable. ASI has not been exempt from the pandemic’s consequences.
As if COVID were not enough, ASI and its communities were rocked by the murder of George Floyd by police in our neighborhood. A June 8, 1919, editorial in the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, of which Swan Turnblad was the publisher, noted that America had accorded “Blacks equality with whites, but a fulfillment has never been achieved.” It added: “There is no good reason for the current situation. It is shameful that this has defined us for so long, and it is high time that we move beyond it.” More than 100 years later, it remains “high time,” and ASI has escalated, internally and externally, its ongoing commitment and actions as a cultural museum to pursue equality and inclusion.
Despite the mandatory closure of the museum to visitors, ASI’s members and communities rallied to support the Institute economically and otherwise, including the so-important well-wishes of support. The staff and volunteers at ASI responded with astounding creativity, resilience, resourcefulness and dedication. Unable to offer classes in person? No problem. We will simply create online courses, ranging from the culinary to crafts to languages. These virtual classes not only drew overwhelming numbers of participants, but revealed ASI’s reach to people across the country and the world. We have been teaching people in 33 states and across
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The American Swedish Institute
With ASI’s reopening to the public, the hum of discussions (although muffled by masks), the aromas of FIKA and the socially distanced stream of visitors through the mansion and exhibitions have returned.
