K-Pop star Eric Nam and Indian American singer-songwriter Raveena will headline a performance at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art on May 13 as part of the institution’s two-week festival marking its centennial.
The museum is comprised of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, with more than 44,000 items in its collections. Eric Nam and Raveena will perform as part of the museum’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival.
This year will be the 100th anniversary of the the National Museum of Asian Art’s opening as the Smithsonian’s first art museum in Washington, DC. Exhibitions this year include ones devoted to paintings from a royal court in Udaipur, contemporary Indian photography, prehistoric Chinese jades, and a wide variety of beads and glass items Charles Lang Freer collected during his three trips to Egypt between 1906 and 1909.
“The National Museum of Asian Art is a space where a wide range of visitors can come together to celebrate Asian cultures and their intersection with America,” said the galleries’ director, Chase F. Robinson, in a statement. “Eric Nam and Raveena are two of the biggest names in music today. Raised in the U.S. and inspired by their respective backgrounds, these artists embrace Korean and Indian influences as means of experimentation and self-expression and truly embody the Asian American experience.”
Before Nam became a sensation on a Korean reality competition show in 2012, he grew up in Atlanta and graduated from Boston College. The singer-songwriter and television personality was named GQ Korea’s “Man of the Year” in 2016 and listed on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2017, and he independently released a highly anticipated all-English sophomore album, There and Back Again, in 2022.
Raveena has released two critically acclaimed albums, Lucid and Asha’s Awakening. The Indian American singer-songwriter signed with Warner Records in early 2022, and her sophomore release was included on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The Best Albums of 2022.”