After a release delayed by the pandemic, a permanent exhibition focused on Bruce Lee’s philosophy is opening at the Winglock Museum of American Experience in Asia and the Pacific in Seattle, with support from the Bruce Lee Foundation.
His daughter Shannon Lee, who oversees the foundation, told Archyde.com that the “Be Water, My Friend” exhibition is an extension of her research into her father’s life as a philosopher.
Speaking to me regarding the project, she said, “I didn’t feel like everyone was getting the full picture of a human being. It’s really part of my job for people to actually understand what a philosopher (Bruce Lee) was.” The project is located in a modest historic building in the city’s international Chinatown.
Lee said she remembers a few glimpses of her life with her father before his death at the age of four, and how he carried her in his lap and played with her, and when she visited him on the set at Golden Harvest studios, as well as their home in Hong Kong.
She recalls those early memories, saying, “These are very meaningful moments for me.”
And she continued, “But the infinite part of that memory is that I have a real sense of him, the way he made me feel… his presence, his energy (that he transmits), his love and the feeling of safety with him.”
Her father’s collection of 2,800 books, including topics on martial arts theory, filmmaking and philosophy, will be permanently in the museum, along with other memorabilia in a separate exhibition.
And the city of Seattle is rich in the legacy of Bruce Lee, including the restaurant (Ruby Choo) where he once worked, and the University of Washington, where he studied philosophy and met his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, who was eventually buried there in 1973 in the Lake View Cemetery in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
(Archyde.com)