In Conversation with: DMHJNY
We talk to Yuka Yokoyama and Mac Gill from the Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York about honoring community, unearthing hidden family archives, and the real impact of making stories accessible across borders.
The Digital Museum of Japanese History in New York (DMHJNY) is the virtual home to historical documents dating back to 1860 from Japanese, Japanese Americans, and American individuals from the New York area. One of the most interesting digital museums in operation today, we sat down with its curator and project manager to discuss its groundbreaking online work in more detail.
Why did you decide to make the DMHNY a digital-only museum?
Yuka: The Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York began through our close relationship with the Japanese American Association of New York (JAA), one of New York’s oldest Japanese community organizations. JAA traces its origins to 1907, when Dr. Toyohiko Takami founded the Japanese Mutual Aid Society to support the growing Japanese immigrant community in New York. Over more than a century, the organization accumulated an extraordinary archive through donations from community members and families.
“We realized that if we waited for these materials
to enter traditional institutional structures,
many stories might remain hidden.”
One of the early moments that shaped our thinking came through the Kozai Collection. We literally encountered suitcases full of materials connected to Japanese community history in New York. Inside were photographs, documents, and pieces of history that had been carefully kept for decades but had never truly been accessible to the public.
That experience changed the way we thought about museums. We realized history was everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. These stories were not sitting neatly inside museum storage or galleries—they were in family homes, office closets, archive boxes, and sometimes literally inside suitcases.
When we started digitizing JAA’s aging collections, it became clear that if we waited to build a physical museum first, many of these materials and stories might remain hidden or even disappear. Digital was never simply a technological decision for us. It was a community and preservation decision.
Instead of asking, “How do we bring everything into one building?” we started asking, “How do we connect stories that already exist across many places?”
That question continues to shape how we work today.
Was the choice to be digital-only a response to a gap in New York’s cultural landscape?
Yuka: Yes. Looking back, we realized there was a gap, although at the time we probably felt it more through practice than theory.
Through our work with the Japanese American Association of New York archives, we saw that so much Japanese and Japanese American history in New York existed in fragments. There were photographs in family homes, community records in office closets, newspapers in archive boxes, and collections like the Kozai photographs that had been carefully preserved but were largely inaccessible. These materials represented more than a century of community history, yet much of it remained unseen.
Traditional museums do extraordinary work, but community histories often do not arrive neatly organized as museum collections. They can be dispersed, incomplete, and deeply personal. We realized that if we waited for these materials to enter traditional institutional structures, many stories might remain hidden.
A digital museum allowed us to create a different model. Instead of waiting for everything to come into one physical space, we could connect stories immediately and make them accessible across generations and across borders.
Because Japanese history in New York has always been international, connected to Japan, Hawaii, the West Coast, and communities around the world, digital also felt natural. We are a hyper-local museum rooted in New York, but from the beginning we understood that our audience and our history extended far beyond the city itself.
So in many ways, digital was not just filling a technological gap. It was helping address a historical and community gap as well.
Were there any particular institutions or communities that influenced your decision to be digital only?
Mac: We were definitely inspired by other collections on the web. Densho.org is a long-standing organization with an incredible online presence focused on preserving the history of Japanese and Japanese Americans on the West Coast. They have an inspiring way of combining storytelling and artifacts, and we really wanted to do something similar for the community on the East Coast, as there hasn’t been a similar initiative before, despite the large presence and long history of Japanese and Japanese Americans living there.
Were there any discussions about how you defined “collection” and “exhibition” when there were no walls, no galleries, no opening hours?
Yuka: Absolutely. We found ourselves asking very basic museum questions in a new way.
Because many of our earliest projects emerged through the Japanese American Association of New York archives, we quickly realized that our materials did not fit neatly into a traditional museum model. We were working with aging photographs, newspapers, newsletters, oral histories, community records, and family donations. Many collections were incomplete or still actively growing as people continued bringing materials forward.
“We began to think of our collections
as living community archives
rather than static holdings.”
That forced us to ask: what actually defines a collection? Is it simply a group of objects in storage, or is it also the stories, memories, and relationships around them?
We began to think of our collections as living community archives rather than static holdings. A photograph was not only an object. It was connected to families, places, and memories that could continue expanding over time.
We had similar conversations about exhibitions. Without walls or opening hours, a visitor could enter through a map, a photograph, an oral history, or a family connection rather than through a museum entrance. Someone in New York, Tokyo, or California could experience the exhibition at completely different moments and in different ways.
Looking back, I think we learned that a digital museum is not simply a traditional museum placed online. It requires rethinking participation itself. Projects like our Issei Portrait initiative continue that approach today. Some portraits remain unidentified, and rather than waiting until everything is complete, we can invite the public to help shape and build the historical record itself.
That early experience taught us that exhibitions could become ongoing conversations rather than fixed experiences with a beginning and end.
Looking back at your earliest projects, what feels most radically different from a brick-and-mortar museum?
Mac: I think the biggest obvious difference is that people can access us from anywhere. I think it’s really helpful for telling the community’s stories and getting that information out into the world so that the information isn’t bound in a physical location.
One of the biggest similarities and what we’ve made a conscientious decision to focus on for exhibit design is keeping visitors within the exhibit space. So this means limiting links that will lead to pages “outside” the exhibit, and working to make our exhibit pages concise and dynamic, so that people feel like they’re moving through different rooms like in a physical museum.
What are the day-to-day challenges of a digital museum?
Mac: I think one of the biggest challenges to being digital-only is that it’s hard to gauge visitor response to our exhibits. When you’re in a physical space, you can hear people talking and reacting to what’s around them, whereas with a digital environment, everyone is accessing it independently and we don’t get that same immediate feedback.
We’re definitely looking into ways to bridge this gap, and hosting in person/hybrid events surrounding our annual exhibit launches definitely tends to generate more comments coming our way.
After the public lecture on our 2026 exhibit, Exhibiting JAPAN: The Japan Pavilions at the New York World’s Fairs in 1939-1940 and 1964-1965, we had a few individuals reach out mentioning they had attended the Fair, and even one who told us that one of the pictures in the exhibit was of her grandmother! I think that’s the most exciting comment we’ve gotten so far, so we’re really looking for more ways to engage with people and make those kinds of connections.
What kinds of technical or skills gaps have you had to solve?
Mac: I think the biggest skill gap that we’ve recently covered is our social media. We hired for the position last fall and our social media coordinator Ashley has been an incredible boon to our museum. Social media was at first part of my job, but I don’t have any training in it and can barely remember to post on my personal social media, so it became pretty apparent quickly after I started that we should hire someone dedicated to that role who had the actual skills and knowledge necessary to build our audience.
In terms of the website, we work with a web design company that did the initial revamp and set up in WP Engine with Elementor, and the drag and drop element style page builder now means that we have control over how all the page types appear. It’s been a really interesting experience as I’ve used this no-code style website creation before, but they’re all different enough that there’s a learning curve, so I think getting used to the platform has been the biggest thing for me personally.
What advice would you give emerging museum creators about making digital images accessible and stories engaging, especially for younger audiences?
Mac: I think the first piece of advice I would give is to know your limits. It can be incredibly easy to get caught up in finding the newest technology trend or trying to tell a lot of stories at once, but that can also be hard to maintain long term and cause burn out if you’re trying to do too many things at once.
It’s incredibly beneficial that we’re covering a very niche topic that is very local, as that means we really have to focus, and, in a way, keeps us from growing too large too fast. It also means that we can really devote our time to amplifying a historically underrepresented community, and have their stories reach a much wider audience than what an exclusively physical museum could.
“Our museum can be interacted with
at any time and from any place,
which really opens the doors to engaging with
our exhibits at your own pace.”
Have you noticed any patterns in your audience behavior?
Mac: I think we get a lot of “cultural explorer” type visitors, and I think the digital format is really what drives that. Our museum can be interacted with at any time and from any place, which really opens the doors to engaging with our exhibits at your own pace. You can stop when you need and you don’t have to worry about having to buy another ticket to pick up where you left off.
We get a lot of visitors from the US (New York especially), and almost an equal number of visitors from Japan, which is really exciting! We also see decent numbers of visitors from China, Singapore and, interestingly enough, Germany, which I’d really love to know why and how they found us!
Do you see yourselves more as a museum, a platform, or a community space?
Mac: I think I view us predominantly as an “experiment”! I guess that sounds a little wild, but I think what we’re doing is a really new and inventive take on both museums and digital exhibitions. We really wanted to move away from just “text and image” on a web page, which tends to be the norm for virtual museums and web pages in general. Obviously, it’s a tried and true method for disseminating information! But one of the things that you can get in a physical museum is interactibility with exhibits (whether by having touch screens, things to smell, or artifact recreations to play with), and that’s something that we really want to focus on and develop as we grow as a museum.
Much like some physical museums, it can feel stifling to just be surrounded by a few images and lengthy sections of text, so we really want to leverage our digital nature to break up exhibit sections and present multiple different things for our visitors to interact with. I think that also really helps people stay interested in the museum and also wanting to come back—to see what fun new thing they get to play with in our next exhibit.
What does “engagement” look like for you?
Mac: Our biggest metric for engagement is time spent on the museum website. We’re still working on building our social media presence, but we’re seeing positive reach there, even if not a lot of engagement yet. I truly had no idea how much work goes into curating a social media platform before Ashley started with us.
We don’t currently have any major exhibitions that involve community input, but our upcoming Portraits of Issei and Mapping Japanese Landmarks, will both be exhibits where we’re looking for people to share their knowledge and stories with us!
Has a digital interaction significantly influenced an exhibition or program decision before?
Mac: Not during the exhibition process, but after our most 2026 annual exhibit opened we had a woman reach out to us via our contact form saying that one of the pictures in the exhibit was of her grandmother, and that her grandparents had actually met at that World’s Fair! It was such a fun thing to hear and it was so gratifying to know our exhibit had reached someone in that way.
For someone discovering DMHNY, which experiences would you recommend they explore first, and why?
Mac: I would suggest starting with our Exhibiting JAPAN exhibit. It’s our newest exhibit and has some really lovely 3D renderings of the Japan pavilions from the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World’s Fair. The buildings no longer exist, so it was really exciting that we were able to work with TOPPAN Inc. to recreate them from architectural drawings and photos to bring them to life again.
I’m sure there’s also sports fans out there reading this, so another fun exhibit is Spirit and Sacrifice Beyond the Diamond, our exhibit on baseball!
How can people who are interested participate, contribute, or collaborate with you?
Mac: Our upcoming project, Portraits of Issei, is going to be looking for community contributions! The portraits, and interviews, were done by Hiroyuki “Tora” Inoue in the 1980s. Each photograph is paired with oral histories and archival research, capturing the lived experiences and community contributions of New York’s Issei generation. While we have identified about 15 of the individuals, there are still over 40 people who remain unidentified. We’ll be looking for community help in identifying these individuals!
Discover DMHJNY and follow them on MagnificentH here.
For Portraits of Issei, DMHJNY is using Triples, an interoperable format of images, enabling multi-platform display of their micro-museums.
