(relaxing music) - People should come to the Arab American National Museum because they will get a sense of a chapter of American history that isn't told anywhere else.

We're trying to fill in the gaps of an incomplete narrative.

For Arab American Heritage Month, we offer free admissions all month and we encourage everyone to take advantage of it.

The Arab American National Museum is the only museum of its kind in the United States.

We present and share stories about Arab-Americans, their history, their culture and being the only institution of its kind in the country, I think we have a great responsibility to be very thorough in the way that we tell and share these stories.

We let objects sometimes speak for themselves but there's also a narrative that we're saying.

We're telling the history of Arab immigration to the United States.

We're showing how Arabs, once they came to the United States, how they sort of created a life for themselves here, how they engage with the society and through various aspects and sectors.

But we also use art as a way of showing that, there is a vibrant and active creative community in the Arab-American community.

So the permanent exhibits are the core galleries as we call them.

We have four of them.

The first one, which is in the, what we call the courtyard, sort of tells the history of Arab contributions to world civilizations.

There was a lot of contribution in terms of science, of mathematics, art, architecture.

So we try to set the scene in this first floor courtyard.

On the second floor is where we tell the history of Arab immigration to the United States.

So we have a gallery called Coming to America, where we talk about the various phases of immigration.

The next gallery is called Living in America and that's where we look at, you know, what is Arab-American culture like.

And then the final permanent gallery that we have is called Making an Impact, where we sort of showcase and shed a spotlight on Arab-Americans who have made an impact on this country in the various sectors.

Whether creative arts, politics, entertainment, literature, what have you.

In the temporary exhibits what we do is they're mostly exhibits of artwork by Arab-American artists.

And again, that's where we kind of show how Arab-American artists today kind of interpret the world around them.

So we are planning to open a rooftop garden.

We have a terrace on the third floor and that will be a what we call an heirloom garden.

So it's to sort of talk about and show how the Arab community here, like many other Arab immigrant communities, have brought plants or seedlings or seeds from their hometowns and cities and planted them here in the United States.

And to talk about that sort of practice and rituals around gardening and sort of putting in roots in a new home.

So that will happen in, opening will be in June.

(singing in foreign language) We are very keen to give a platform for Arab-American artists.

We have an artist in residency program that I believe is one of the only of it's kind in the country as well, where we try to support as much as possible, emerging young, newly starting emerging artists, giving them just, you know, some financial assistance a space to work and an opportunity to showcase their work as well.

(singing in foreign language) Leila Awadallah, I find a very special artist, dancer, choreographer.

We have a conference called MOVE, which is run by Access, our parent organization.

And as part of that conference we have a performance by Leila Awadallah called TERRANEA and I believe it's, it's about sort of the Mediterranean Sea as a kind of crossroads for immigrants.

(singing in foreign language) - Very interested in researching ideas about contemporary Arabic dance forms and what that might mean to look at rooting specific movement or ideas in the Arab world but then also exploring them in more contemporary or experimental dance choreography's.

(singing in foreign language) For me, choreographing or dancing is also really deeply related to my love for Palestine and my people and what it means to speak out about Palestine issues and Palestine realities and let that initiate a conversation with audiences and with artists.

The performance on April 28th is called TERRANEA: hakawatia of the sea.

It's a dance performance about the Mediterranean Sea, both as a mythological space where so many, you know mythologies have been told about that water but also as a site of loss.

The Mediterranean Sea is, you know, a space for grieving.

There's always every day life lost in the sea.

It's also about the land and what it feels like to be next to the sea and the the ways the land and water converse in our bodies and in our dances.

So our project is called Body Watani, Dance Project.

Watani means my homeland in Arabic.

So our dance project explores, you know what is home in our bodies.

So this is a performance that I would love to invite everyone to, to share that moment, to share that time where we think about, you know what do our bodies know about our home and our generations and what do our, what kind of stories from our grandmothers live inside of us.

(singing in foreign language) - It's a great way and a great, you know gateway into learning about this community, what they've done, what they've accomplished, their culture.

And I think if you're new to Dearborn, using the museum as a sort of stepping stone to discover the rest of Dearborn would be a great, it'd be a great way to do it.