Ryan Laird on WNY for. For the Museum of Chinese in America in Lower Manhattan,

the pandemic would have been hard enough, but then shortly after COVID upended life for everyone,

a fire ripped through the museum's

archive and destroyed about 5% of its permanent collection. These last few years

have been hard for the museum in other ways too, Moca became the unlikely site of protests

over the city's plan to build jails in four of the five boroughs including one

in Chinatown to close Reicher's Island. The specific issue was a $35 million

award from the city proposed back in 2019 as part of a community give back as they

called it. New York magazines Curbed reported,

the city calls the money, it gave the museum,

a community investment, one of many given out

in an attempt to make an unpopular plan more palatable.

Now, the museum has named a new leader, nonprofit executive Michael Lee.

We will ask him about what's next for MocaA and what the museum has to do with the

city's borough-based jail program. Michael Lee, incoming president of the

Museum of Chinese and America joins me now. Michael, thanks so much for coming on.

Welcome to WNYC.

Oh, thanks so much.

This is an incredible honor.

I've grew up in New York City.

I've been listening to you for 20 years.

And my high school classmate calls you her radio boyfriend.

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