Here are a few photos from the Gala Dinner and the After Party, plus links to a LOT more photos from the night.
Yosh Uchida, Deni & Norman Mineta, and Gordon Yamate
One of our volunteer photographers, Tracy Kumono, has produced a short slide show of the evening’s highlights, which she has graciously allowed us to share with everyone.
JANM President/CEO G.W. Kimura with Tomoshige Mizutani
She also has the complete set of photos (750+) on her website, from which you can order individual prints. You will need to enter your name and email address to enter the gallery and order prints directly from her.
Wyatt Conlon was our “Red Carpet” and “After Party” photographer. He has put an album together. You can order prints directly from him as well. If you would like to order individual prints, simply enter the code word “gala” to receive a 20% discount off your purchase.
I am deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of my dear friend—educator and activist Jim Hirabayashi on May 23, 2012. Jim will always hold a special place in the history and memories of Museum staff, volunteers, and leadership. As our dynamic and visionary Founding Scholar and Curator Emeritus, he established the philosophical foundation of the Museum that continues to guide our work today.
During the opening of the Museum’s landmark exhibition, America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience in 1994, controversy arose over the Museum’s use of the term “concentration camp.” As a Harvard-trained anthropologist, Jim was adamant that U.S. history be examined accurately without euphemisms, and argued that the term “relocation center” was actually a euphemism used by governmental officials to strip Japanese Americans of their basic constitutional rights (see Hirabayashi’s essay, “Concentration Camp” or “Relocation Center —What’s in a Name?).
In more recent years, Jim served as the Chief Project Advisor for the Museum’s International Nikkei Research Project, and was Co-Editor for one of the project’s resulting publications, New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. At our 2008 National Conference in Denver, CO, Jim presented a dramatic reading on the complex choices faced by Nisei families during WWII from his piece, Four Hirabayashi Cousins: A Question of Identity.
The Museum and our community owe a great deal to Jim, who along with his late brother, Gordon, and now his son Lane, have devoted their lives to educating others by taking a stand for their principles with integrity and unwavering commitment.
Jim will be deeply missed for his remarkable wit, intellectual insight, charismatic spirit, and humble character. On behalf of the Museum family, I send our heartfelt condolences to the Hirabayashi family during this difficult time.
For more about Jim Hirabayashi, view clips filmed for Jim’s recognition at the Museum’s 2004 Annual Gala Dinner on our Discover Nikkei site.
—Nancy Araki
[Posted on behalf of Nancy Araki, JANM Director of Community Affairs and long-time personal friend of Jim Hirabayashi]
The Japanese American National Museum has once again been nominated in Downtown News‘ 2012 Best of Downtown Contest!
We’ve been nominated in 2 categories: Best Museum and Best Family Attraction for our Target Free Family Saturdays!
Help us win by going to votebestof.com and follow the instructions to vote.
Plus, if you vote for at least 30 categories (out of the 120 total), you automatically get entered to win prizes (grand prize: 2-night stay at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel that includes dinner for two at Sai Sai, $200 spending cash, dinner for two at Morton’s The Steakhouse, a $150 Ticketmaster gift card, and a Los Angeles Conservancy walking tour. Additional prizes: iPod Touch, cash prizes, gift certificates and more!).
You’ll need to log in to vote. If you have voted in previous years, you can use the same account.
At the Japanese American National Museum’s 2012 Gala Dinner, “Transforming a Forgotten Story”, held on May 5 at the J.W. Marriott Hotel, Tracey Doi, Chief Financial Officer of Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., drew one ticket from over a thousand entries to the Lexus Opportunity Drawing. The winning ticket would get a new 2013 Lexus GS 450h, which Toyota donated to the Museum for this fundraiser.
Tracey dug deep into the barrel and pulled out the lucky ticket. She read the name and paused. Only once in the decade that Toyota has donated Lexus vehicles to the Museum’s annual dinner has the owner of the winning ticket been in the ballroom. No response.
Unlike most of the ticket stubs, there was no phone number on the winning ticket. Just a mailing address sticker people use so they don’t have to handwrite their home address on their mail.
The next day, we looked up the record for the ticket stub and found a home phone number. We called and no one was home (it was Sunday). We left a message and eventually made direct contact with the lucky winner.
For those of you familiar with Japanese American history, see if this profile sounds familiar: the recipient’s grandfather immigrated to the United States before World War II. He eventually moved to the Southwest to work in agriculture. The recipient’s father and his siblings all had to work for the family business. The family business evolved into driving trucks from Texas to Los Angeles to sell produce and vegetables at the produce market.
At first, the family could not find a place in the Los Angeles produce market and sold their goods on the streets outside. When a spot opened up, the grandfather moved the family to Los Angeles and established his business. Eventually, the grandfather retired and the recipient’s father and brother took over. The recipient and his siblings then were brought into the produce business and are the third generation to operate it. The recipient said that there are enough nieces and nephews involved so the business should make it to the fourth generation.
If that profile sounds familiar, it should. It is a common story among Japanese Americans. But, the recipient is not Japanese. His name is Dan Horwath and his grandfather came from Hungary. The business, Royal Produce, deals with sales, shipping, and cold storage.
So, how did Dan happen to buy Lexus Opportunity tickets from the Museum?
The family business once imported crops from Mexico and needed an office in Nogales, Texas. Dan spent 20 years there (met his wife, Rosie, who is from Mexico) and befriended a man named Toru Fujiwara. When Toru’s father Hiroshi passed away about six years ago, Dan wanted to make a donation in his memory. But since there was no Buddhist temple in Nogales, Horwath made a donation to the Museum in Hiroshi’s memory.
Apparently, that put Horwath on a list and he began getting literature and other mailings from the Museum. That included Lexus Opportunity tickets and he began donating money annually.
“I’d been to the Museum,” he explained. “I grew up with Japanese Americans (who worked for his father).”
Over the years, people like Henry Kuwahara, Fred Ota, and Ken Ito worked many years for the Horwath family business. It left an impression on young Daniel, who observed, “They were very important to our industry. It is a hard business and they worked hard.”
Dan remembers taking judo classes at the Pasadena dojo when he was growing up with his brother. They were the only non-JAs.
Dan was quite surprised to be told he had won the Lexus. It was never his intention to actually win, but “to give something back.” Still, his wife will have a new car when Toyota brings out the 2013 line.
Dan still gets up at 3 a.m. each day to get to work at the produce market. His wife works with accounting and food safety, but their two children are off on other careers.
Dan is quick to recall the large influence Japanese Americans had in his business and ticked off several businesses like Morita Produce and Olympic Produce which were run by Nikkei. Things are changing, but he would like their memory to survive.
What is interesting is that Dan originally bought $500 worth of opportunity tickets back in November when they first were available. Then, this last March, he bought another $500. It was out of the second batch that Tracey Doi pulled his winning ticket.
In the end, it was gratifying that someone like the Horwaths get the new Lexus. Their support of the Museum is admirable and their motives are ideal.
Congratulations!
Dr. Greg Kimura, President & CEO of JANM, congratulates Dan Horwath, the winner of the 2013 Lexus 450h
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!
The coolest exhibit at JANM is the paper folding. But I call it origami because I love to learn new origami every time I go to the museum. There’s a beautiful white dress and even shoes that are made by folding paper. Wow! There are masks, dinosaurs and other great things to see. I have been going to JANM for 7 years and I am going to be 9 pretty soon.
Photo by Richard M. Murakami
I mostly go to the Target Free Family Saturdays because there is great stuff to see and do. And, I get to cook with Lisa.
Blog written by Pika
JANM friend and longtime Target Free Family Saturday participant
We were greatly saddened to hear about the passing of Mr. John Ellington (1937-2012). He was a dear, Arkansan friend who was always available to help former inmates locate their barracks and other landmarks at Jerome.
Here is a link to his obituary, which lists his many accomplishments and details his lifelong commitment to education. There is also a link to a virtual guest book where you can leave messages of condolence for his family.
Mr. Ellington’s grace and generosity will never be forgotten by all his friends from the Japanese American National Museum. May he rest in peace.
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
Yes, today is the first day of our Spring Member Appreciation Days (May 11-13), and we are fielding the online orders that you members were all saving for the special 20% discount (certain restrictions apply!)
But don’t forget the other benefits of May M.A.D.ness–your current/valid JANM membership card will also get you free admission and a 20% store discount (certain restrictions apply) at 19 other Southern California cultural institutions! That means a whole weekend of cultural inspiration and shopping at places like LACMA, MOCA, Pacific Asia Museum, the LA Public Library Store, and MORE! We even have a few partners further south–Orange County of Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. You can find a complete list of our partners here.
Not a member yet? You can join today at the Museum and receive a temporary membership card that will be valid at our partnering institutions.
With three days, you can visit different places in Downtown LA, the Westside, Pasadena, and points south!
Take Mom on a special date this weekend or buy her a gift membership that will be good through our next MADness in November too!
We had three special visitors today at JANM. These elementary school students from Anaheim, California created a History Day Project that won at the school, county, and state levels. So next month they and their families are heading to Washington, DC for the NATIONALS!
This year’s National History Day theme is “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History” and they chose to focus on the Japanese American experience, from the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the 1988 Civil Liberties Act. Here is the link to the fantastic Web site that they created!
Major kudos to these exceptional young ladies. We’re rooting for you!
