Our Fighting for Democracy: Who is the “We” in “We, the People”? exhibition is traveling next to the Highground Veterans Memorial Park in Neillsville, WI from November 1 through December 31, 2012.
The exhibition presents the diverse perspectives of seven ordinary citizens whose lives and communities were forever changed by World War II. It asks visitors to think critically about freedom, history, and, ultimately, the ongoing struggle to live democratically in a diverse America.
The Highground is the 9th venue for this traveling exhibition. The mission of The Highground is to honor Veterans and their families and to educate about the cost of things—the human cost. The Highground is a Veterans Memorial Park that pays tribute to the Dead, and honors the Survivors, their service, and their sacrifices. It also pays tribute to the people who supported them when they were away and upon their return.
Highground Veterans Memorial Park
W7031 Ridge Road
Neillsville, WI 54456
For more information about this presentation, contact 715.743.4224, or visit thehighground.org.
For more information about the exhibition and a listing of other venues, to explore an online version, or to download the accompanying Educator’s Resource Guide, visit ncdemocracy.org.
Fighting for Democracy is presented by the Highground Veterans Memorial Park in partnership with the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, an educational program of the Japanese American National Museum, to advance the understanding of, and commitment to, American democratic ideals. The Los Angeles exhibition and traveling version are funded in part by the U.S. Army Center of Military History. The traveling exhibition ten-city tour has been made possible through the generous support of The Boeing Company.
If you missed the Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami exhibition when it was here at JANM earlier this year, there will be opportunities to catch the amazing origami pieces as the exhibition travels.
Folding Paper just opened at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College in Keene, NH. It will be on display through December 9, 2012. The exhibit is free and open to the public.
From there, it will go next to the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI from January 26 – April 7, 2013. Future venues are the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA), Oregon Historical Society (Portland, OR), Peoria Riverfront Museum (Peoria, IL), Bellevue Arts Museum (Bellevue, WA), Center for the Arts of Bonita Springs (Bonita Springs, FL), Brigham Young University Museum of Art (Provo, UT), and the Boise Art Museum (Boise, ID).
GRB3 Opening Party Saturday, September 22
6PM – 10PM FREE!
Giant Robot Biennale 3 opens with a party on Saturday, September 22.
Join us as we celebrate the exhibition opening with curator Eric Nakamura, GRB3 artists, and a performance by Money Mark!
The third show in conjunction with Eric Nakamura, owner of Asian American pop culture juggernaut Giant Robot. Giant Robot Biennale 3 will feature a gallery of eight emerging artists along with a customized vinyl figure collection.
Following two previous successful exhibitions at the National Museum, the Biennale continues to push the envelope with a creative, fresh, and uniquely interactive experience. This year’s exhibition highlights the works of Rob Sato, Deth P. Sun, Ako Castuera, Eishi Takaoka, Saelee Oh, Sean Chao, Albert Reyes, and Zach Gage.
Using figures designed by Uglydoll creator David Horvath, Nakamura curated Project Remix, a custom vinyl show with over 80 artists from seven countries—including the rare combination of both established customizers and fine artists.
Special additions to the exhibition include an original piece from Japanese painter Masakatsu Sashie as well as arcade machines running Jeni Yang and Beau Blyth’s new indie video game, Catburger.
Check janm.org/grb3 for more info about the exhibition and related programs.
Sometimes, when I visit museums, the exhibits tend to lack substance and are most of the time, very similar. After walking through and reflecting on the material, I don’t feel like I’ve gained anything. It feels as if something is lacking. Xploration Lab 2012 (XLAB) fulfills every need and want in an exhibit and more. XLAB is an innovative museum experience where participants are fully immersed in each aspect of the display, and through their participation, aid in the creation of future engaging exhibitions for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM).
XLAB’s main focus is to educate visitors on the importance of culture and identity, and how sometimes, those two concepts are one in the same. In modern America, the teenage demographic, while seemingly hard to understand, is actually not so much of an enigma as many people are led to believe. They are on the precipice of adulthood and are beginning to stray away from their normal routine to engage in new experiences. XLAB is the perfect exhibit for any teenager because the subject matter is broad enough to entice them, yet specific enough to be relatable. In addition, teenagers are trying to figure out who they are and that is essentially what XLAB is all about. The interactive aspect of this exhibit adds a whole new dimension to the clichéd museum experience and makes it more effective in delivering its message.
As I walked into XLAB, I instantly realized that this exhibit would be unlike any other museum experience I had previously encountered. Since I’m a half Caucasian and half Japanese teenager, the first section that really caught my eye was What Are You? Each person who participated in Kip Fulbeck’s project had words to say that I could relate to as a teenager and as a person of multiple cultural backgrounds. Although the rest of the first room was wonderful and educational, the placement of My Voice is a Microphone made the activity somewhat easy to miss for people who weren’t paying attention to the layout.
The next room contained a lot more interaction and each section had content that would attract teenagers. One of XLAB’s more popular portions is Ways to Tell if You’re Japanese American. Even though the list was written from a Southern California Sansei and Yonsei perspective, almost every local Japanese American teenager can relate to at least a few numbers on the list. A common high school student would certainly enjoy two of the last activities: Pidgin and Express Yourself. Pidgin is a dialect that is the unofficial language of Hawaii. XLAB has taken this idea and added modern internet slang such as LOL, FTW, and ROFL, which has made it much more relatable for teenagers, while still infusing the cultural Hawaiian roots into the activity.
Express Yourself is another ingenious portion that focuses on how expression through what people wear is becoming more and more prominent. The section is composed of a large whiteboard where visitors could design their own shirts using dry erase markers, and magnets. Surrounding the white board are completed t-shirts that aid in the expression of ones culture and identity. The interaction involved in this activity helped make it one the most popular activities that XLAB had to offer.
Each and every activity had a successful way of delivering the overall message of culture and identity. People of all ages would enjoy this exhibit because of everything it has to offer. The interaction of each activity sets XLAB apart from the plethora of boring and formulaic exhibits that most teenagers are accustomed to. In essence, this exhibit is not one to miss, and everyone should take some time out of his or her day to experience what XLAB has to offer, before it closes on August 26th.
Writer Jeremy Parks, a summer intern at JANM, will be in 11th grade this coming fall at Campbell Hall High School located in Studio City. He will be a news editor on his school paper and is an offensive lineman on the football team.
If you were at the launch of Allen Say’s most recent book, Drawing from Memory, most of this will be familiar to you, but it also includes a sneak peak at his upcoming book about his daughter Yuriko, The Favorite Daughter. This is a view of the artist in his studio, which is not much different than the workspace he had when he was 12 in Drawing from Memory! Very spartan!
Sipho Mabona is one of the most accomplished and respected origami artists in the world.
Mabona installing The Plague at JANM, 2012, Photo by Michael Dressler
Like many folders of complex origami forms, he starts with square sheets of paper and transforms them into bugs, birds and beasts that are so intricately folded that they often take hours to complete. Without using scissors or glue, he is able to create perfectly proportioned, anatomically correct and artistically exquisite representations of swallows, polar bears, insects and even people. He is not the only artist who does this, as we can see from the other folded figures in the Folding Paper exhibition that is currently at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Such artists as Robert J. Lang, Brian Chan and Michael G. LaFosse are renowned for their remarkable folded paper depictions of the natural realm.
What makes this Swiss-South African artist different is what he chooses to do and say with his folded paper bugs, birds and beasts. Mabona’s large-scale installations, often comprising many tens of folded creatures arranged in a particular formation, make bold and very timely political and social statements.
His 2010 work Bearly Surviving, which depicts dozens of polar bears crowded together on a shrinking iceberg—all folded individually from squares of white paper—is a poignant sculptural commentary on the damage caused by climate change. Another of his installations depicts a flock of graceful swallows confronted by a glass window; several have hit the glass and have fallen dead on the floor, suggesting a tragic collision of the human and natural realms.
Bearly Surviving by Sipho Mabona, 2010, Photo by Sipho Mabona
His site-specific installation The Plague, which is currently on view at JANM, contains an even more potent political message. A total 144 locusts take form out of sheets of dollar bills and swarm the gallery, evoking the Biblical plague that was inflicted on humans who had behaved badly.
The Plague, 2012, JANM. Photo by Sipho Mabona.
According to Mabona, the transformation of money into locusts is a reference to the large, multi-national investment corporations that take over smaller companies throughout the world and then discard them for a quick profit. In German-speaking Europe, such corporations, usually foreign, have recently been referred to as Heuschrecken, or locusts, spreading in swarms and greedily devouring local businesses. In 2011, he decided that it was this concept that he wanted to depict in his next installation. Since the US dollar bill has become the global symbol of capitalism, he contacted the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ordered sheets of uncut dollar bills for his project. He then flew out to New York to pick them up, as the Bureau won’t send uncut bills overseas.
Mabona folding sheets of US dollar bills at JANM, March 2010. Photo by Meher McArthur.
In October 2011, he began folding his locusts out of squares measuring 7 by 3 bills each. Each locust took approximately 5 hours to fold, and is cleverly designed so that George Washington’s head appears on the wings and upper back, and the phrase “In God We Trust” runs across their foreheads. Mabona was careful to study not only the anatomy of these voracious insects but also their swarming formation; they all fly in the same direction at once. A week before the exhibition opened at JANM, Mabona began installing the piece, attaching each locust to a plastic thread that stretches up to the 35-foot high ceiling and then down to the floor. The effect is quite menacing. It is easy to forget that these creatures are folded out of paper.
Mabona is fascinated by the transformational aspect of origami, the potential to fold a flat square of paper into any form. The concept of transformation plays a large part in The Plague; dollar bills are morphed into a sinister plague of destructive insects. “Although a locust swarm is scary,” says Mabona, “where there is the ability to transform, there is hope. In origami, paper is folded into forms like these locusts, but the forms can be unfolded again. The creases will remain, but the paper can be folded again into something else—perhaps butterflies.”
Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami is on display through August 26, 2012. Visit the exhibition site for more details, related programs, and origami resources: janm.org/exhibits/foldingpaper
By Meher McArthur
Curator of Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami
The musical artist and YouTube phenom Marie Digby is solid with JANM — and JANM is definitely down with her. Recently, Ms. Digby participated in a PSA for The Remembrance Project (www.remembrance-project.org) for JANM. (Remembrance Project is a way of commemorating folks who suffered through the US concentration camp experience and making sure that such civil rights tragedies never occur again in this great nation.)
Watching this music video of Ms. Digby’s made me think of another exhibit at JANM: Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami. So, in honor of that exhibition…and in honor of Marie Digby, JANM is posting this for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Drawing the Line was our participation in the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 project, a collaboration of more than fifty cultural institutions across Southern California, which came together for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world.
All of the partners in this ground-breaking collaboration have been asked to issue a survey to its members and supporters to close out the project. The survey will collect general responses on attitudes about arts and culture in Los Angeles and throughout Southern California and is a follow-up to one conducted prior to the project launch.
Could you help us again with this follow-up survey?
Please take this brief survey to help the Japanese American National Museum and other arts institutions across Southern California plan events and exhibitions.
The survey is anonymous and takes just a few minutes. Your responses will help us understand how to improve experiences for our visitors and foster collaboration among arts organizations.
Today, March 14, 2012 the internet search engine Google is celebrating the life and work of Japanese origami Master Akira Yoshizawa by spelling out its banner logo in origami letters.
Google Origami Logo designed by Robert J. Lang
Such a move is a testament to Yoshizawa’s contribution to the worldwide phenomenon that origami has become. It’s timing is also wonderful as we celebrate the opening this week of the exhibition Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami at the Japanese American National Museum.
Had Yoshizawa lived another seven years—he was born on March 14, 1911 and died in 2005—today would have been Yoshizawa’s 101st birthday. Yoshizawa was the world’s first full-time origami artist. In his twenties, he gave up his job in a factory to devote his life to origami. Over the course of his long life, he created numerous new origami designed, including rabbits, gorillas, pandas, and the pelican featured in the Folding Paper exhibition at JANM.
Akira Yoshizawa, photo courtesy of Mrs. Kiyo Yoshizawa
Yoshizawa also invented a new folding technique called wet folding, which enables folders to smooth down points and angles to create more naturalistic figures. This technique revolutionized origami, transforming it into a medium that is now used by artists all over the world to create exquisitely modeled folded paper sculptures.
In addition, he developed a system of notation for origami designs made up of arrows and lines to indicate the types and directions of folds. A version of this system, which helps people who don’t read Japanese to understand origami instructions, has essentially become the written language of origami instruction. In acknowledgement of his contributions to the evolution and spread of origami worldwide, the Japanese Emperor Hirohito awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun in 1983
Now, back to Google’s logo. It might be surprising to some that the playful origami letters were not generated by a computer. They were folded by renowned American origami artist Robert J. Lang. Lang, a laser physicist with a Ph.D. from CalTech, like Yoshizawa, left his job at JPL in Pasadena to become a full-time origami artist, and he now designs a wide range of origami forms, writes and lectures all around the world about origami (watch Robert Lang’s TED talk >>).
Lang’s approach to origami is highly mathematical, as can be seen in his super-complex insects and animals like the Emperor Scorpion on view in the Folding Paper exhibition. He is also regularly asked to apply his profound understanding of the mathematical origami to projects in the realms of space exploration, medicine, car air bag design, television commercials and now search engine logo design.
Scorpion HP, opus 593 by Robert J. Lang, 2011, folded from one uncut square of Hanji paper
Lang was my advisor for the exhibition since its conception in early 2010. I had thought I couldn’t be more impressed by Robert than I already was. He epitomizes the spirit of contemporary origami in his brilliance, artistry and generosity of spirit. Today he told me that when he was hired by Google to design its origami logo, he was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He had to keep the project a secret. Now he’s being hired to do top secret origami assignments! Can he get any more awesome?!
Come and celebrate Akira Yoshizawa, Robert J. Lang and other outstanding origami artists at JANM! If you need to find the museum’s address, just google it!
Robert J. Lang will give a lecture at JANM entitled From Flapping Birds to Space Telescopes: The Modern Science of Origami
on Saturday May 26 at 2pm.
Posted by Meher McArthur, Curator of Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami
