The Wing’s Collection: Archiving Chinatown’s Memory Through Objects
2026-07-12 / 16:00 – 18:00
Fortunes & Futures (2/3)
Curated Talks and Deep Dives into Wing Noodles: The Heart of Chinatown
This second talk focuses on objects that tell stories forgotten or never made public in the first place, heritage conservation at the local level, and the Wing’s Collection (held by the MEM—Centre des mémoires montréalaises, donation from Gilbert Lee, Wing Noodles Ltd).
The idea of the Wing’s Collection sprouted when Gilbert Lee, co-owner of Wings, mandated his friend Jean-Philippe Riopel, who’s also a Montréal guide and museologist, to create a collection made up of 5000 lots of objects closely tied to the history of the Lee family, of Wings, and of Montréal’s Chinatown. This work would be taken on by new non-profit Objets de Mémoire, groupe d’action muséologique, and its collaborators. After 4 years of meticulous work, the Wings Collection has been donated to the MEM—Centre des mémoires montréalaises by Gilbert Lee. In this talk, Jean-Philippe Riopel shares his journey and walks us through the incredible story of the Wings Collection’s creation and its preservation as a heritage collection, while also presenting some of its most interesting objects.
With Jean-Philippe Riopel, founder of the museological action group Objets de mémoire