Tag: Discover Nikkei

Interview with Patrick Nagatani

Vicky Murakami-Tsuda Leave a comment

We recently interviewed artist Patrick Nagatani and his upcoming retrospective exhibition opening at JANM next weekend. Check out the article on our Discover Nikkei website:

Seeing Beauty Through a Magic Lens: Patrick Nagatani and 35 Years of Art
By Darryl Mori
Read the interview >>

We also just launched the exhibition site which includes more information, including:

– short blurbs about the various series included in the exhibition

– prompts for the upcoming Guide by Cell audio guide that is being prepared with Patrick Nagatani

– an article about the exhibition by Lisa Sasaki who coordinated the travel of the show from the University of New Mexico’s University Art Museum. This is my favorite quote from the artist about why Nagatani feels that JANM is a perfect venue for the exhibition:

“This is the place that my parents will come to see my work. This is the place where it belongs.”

Check out the exhibition site >>

Photo courtesy of Karen Kuehn

GIDRA magazine

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Our award-winning Watase Media Arts Center recently produced ten new videos for the Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activism exhibition (on view through February 19, 2012).

For those who can’t make it down to see the exhibition or prefer to watch it from the comfort of your own home, we will be sharing them online over the next few months.

The first video up is about Gidra, the seminal magazine of the Asian American movement published from April 1969 to April 1974.

We also have scans from 4 full issues on Discover Nikkei:
April 1969 (first issue) | January 1971 | February 1973 | April 1974 (final issue)

For those of you who worked on, contributed to, or read Gidra, please take this survey: Did you Gidra survey >>

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We’ll be posting new videos weekly. So check back for the links.

We’re pulling them together into a Drawing the Line playlist on our JANM YouTube channel too.

All of the videos are also available on DVD from the Museum Store: Drawing the Line DVD >>

Seinan Panel on Sun, October 30

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“Seinan” is an area in Southwest Los Angeles, California, where a thriving Japanese American community existed before World War II.

Japanese American Living Legacy has gathered stories and personal experiences from people who lived in Seinan before World War II in the book published earlier this year, Seinan: Southwest Los Angeles, Stories and Experiences from Residents of Japanese Ancestry.

Join us this Sunday for a program in partnership with JA Living Legacy.

With moderator Ray Uyemura, four panelists—Ansho Mas Uchima, Minoru Shinmoto, Christine Uriu, and Thomas Shigekuni—will share stories about Seinan, including about the community’s religious groups, language schools, public schools, and social clubs.

There will be a book signing following the program.

SEINAN PANEL
Sunday, October 30, 2011 • 2pm
Japanese American National Museum

Come hear how Southwest Los Angeles was a thriving Nisei community that was almost wiped out with the forced removal and events of World War II.

For more information >>

Presented in collaboration with JA Living Legacy and the Japanese American National Museum.

 

We are sharing a chapter from the book on our Discover Nikkei website (parts 1 & 2 are now online, with the final part being posted this Sunday):

Shinmoto Family
By Minoru Shinmoto
Read the article >>

 

“Farewell to Manzanar” screening with Director John Korty!

Vicky Murakami-Tsuda Leave a comment

Our Farewell to Manzanar screening is coming up this Sunday! The special guest will be Director John Korty who will participate in a Q&A following the screening.

One of our volunteers recently interviewed the award-winning director for our Discover Nikkei website about how he got into filmmaking, and about making Farewell to Manzanar into a film.

Read the interview >>

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If you haven’t already purchased tickets for this special screening, here’s the info:

Farewell to Manzanar screening
Japanese American National Museum
Sunday, October 23, 2011 • 2pm
Join Director John Korty for a Q&A following the screening!

$25 Members; $30 non-members, includes admission and a complimentary copy of the DVD.

Purchase tickets >>

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If you can’t make it to the screening, you can also order copies of the DVD from the Museum Store. The DVD includes bonus features: the Remembering Manzanar documentary created for the Manzanar National Historic Site; and an interview with Jeanne Wakatasuki Houston from when she was honored at the Museum’s 2006 Gala Dinner.

Order the DVD from the Museum Store >>

View video clips from the interview on Discover Nikkei >>

Volunteer Docent Sergio Holguin

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For many people who visit the Museum, the highlight of their visit is often getting a tour from one of our many dedicated volunteer docents. Many of our docents share their own or their family’s first-hand experiences from World War II. However, as our older Nisei volunteers have slowed down a bit, the demand for docents is being increasingly met by those whose families were not incarcerated in America’s concentration camps.

Photo by Richard Watanabe

Although their experiences aren’t first-hand, their being there to share the Japanese American experience with our visitors is very important, and in some ways may even help non-JA visitor relate more with the stories.

One of our younger docents is Sergio Holguin, a computer science major at Cal Poly Pomona. Sergio is a third-generation Mexican American. He recently wrote a wonderful article for our Discover Nikkei website that shares how he became interested in Japanese American history, and why he decided to volunteer at the Museum.

Nisei? Sansei? No, I’m just a Gakusei
By Sergio Holguin
Read his article >>

*****

P.S. Here’s a 2009 article on Discover Nikkei about another non-JA Museum docent—Nahan Gluck:

The History of Japanese Americans from the Perspective of a German American: Mr. Nahan Gluck, docent for the Japanese American National Museum

Drawing the Line opening tonight!

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The opening celebration for Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activism in Post-War Los Angeles is just a couple of hours away!

Join us tonight from 5:30 to 8pm to celebrate the opening members, many of the artists and their families & friends, and special guests. There’ll be a special performance by Nobuko Miyamoto with Benny Yee & Atomic Nancy!

Our staff & volunteers have been working hard to get the show ready to open. Along with the artwork & artifacts, our Watase Media Arts Center has developed new video segments about each of the featured artists. You’ll be able to view them in the exhibition, but will also be available for sale on a DVD through the Museum Store. There’s also a Guide by Cell audio guide with audio clips from the interview.

Check out the updated exhibition site for more info on the Guide by Cell, to see the bios for the featured artists, plus links to full scans from 4 issues of Gidra magazine on Discover Nikkei! There’s also more exhibition-related public programs added (more to come!).

NEW! How to do your own oral history interview tutorial on Discover Nikkei

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Have you ever wanted to record the history of your grandparents, your parents, or other people in your life?

In 2009, Cole Kawana was a sixth grader at Seven Arrows School. His assignment was to do a service-learning project, and so with the help of his extended family, he conducted an oral history interview with his great-uncle, Arthur Ichiro Murakami, who is a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor.

In addition to the oral history, he decided to create a video tutorial so that he could teach and encourage his fellow students to try it for themselves.

His video tutorial was shown as part of Xploration Lab this past spring. It’s now also on the Museum’s Discover Nikkei website.

We’ve split the tutorial up into segments, with each one going over different steps in the process, including equipment, preparation, conducting the interview, and follow-up.

In addition to Cole’s tutorial video clips, we’ve added a downloadable checklist and sample release form. We’re also working on sample questions and translating everything into the other site languages (Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese).

At the end of the page, you can view the interview that Cole conducted with his great-uncle, plus links to additional online oral history resources.

Check out the tutorial on Discover Nikkei >>

Many thanks to Cole and his family for letting us share his video! Thanks to Sam Arbizo, Esther Newman, Yoko Nishimura, and Geoff Jost for working to get the tutorial online!

 

30-second volunteer videos

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Our volunteers are amazing. They continually inspire us with their dedication and enthusiasm. They are even willing to step outside their comfort zones if it means helping the museum to share the important stories of the Japanese American experience.

Since last summer, staff at our Watase Media Arts Center along with interns and volunteers have been working on a series of digital shorts that record many of our docents and other volunteers. The videos share the volunteer’s personal stories related to artifacts from our core Common Ground: The Heart of Community exhibition.

We’re collecting them together for easy access on our Discover Nikkei website. There are already 15 of the videos online, with more being added almost weekly.

Check out the volunteer videos on Discover Nikkei:

The 21st Century Museum: Significant artifacts selected by Japanese American National Museum Volunteers
http://5dn.org/janm-vols

Volunteers featured so far: Bob Uragami, Babe Karasawa, Yae Aihara, Richard Murakami, Yoko Horimoto, Jim Tanaka, Tohru Isobe, Mas Yamashita, Robert Moriguchi, Kathryn Madara, Kent Hori, May Porter, Eileen Sakamoto, Lee Hayashi, and Roy Sakamoto.

Here are the three most recently uploaded videos:


Amy & Penelope Hill

Amy Hill’s “LOST AND FOUND, Life as I (K)NEW It” at JANM this weekend!

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Amy Hill will be at the museum this weekend for 3 performances of her show, “LOST AND FOUND, Life as I (K)NEW It.”

Amy & Penelope HillOctober 1 @ 7 pm
October 2 @ 2 pm & 7 pm

Amy Hill explores how her life has evolved since her daughter became a part of her family. She talks about adoption, single motherhood, multiracial/transracial identity mash-ups and her continuing struggles to figure it all out in a humorous and honest way. Far from her days of flying solo, she has moved into a not so solo world: her daughter may or may not make an appearance.

Read our interview with Amy about the show:

Lost and Found: Amy Hill on Adoption and Identity
By Mia Nakaji Monnier

Watch a teaser of the show:

 

Purchase tickets >>

$15 Members, Students, Groups (10+), Seniors
$20 non-members

*Special: $5 families who have adopted. For discount rates, email Koji Steven Sakai at ksakai@janm.org for password!

Becoming American? Reintroducing Issei Artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi

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Next Saturday, on September 24th at 2pm, Dr. ShiPu Wang will be at the Museum to talk about his book, Becoming American? The Art and Identity Crisis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi was one of the preeminent 20th century American artists. He was active in New York as a teacher and in both artist circles and Japanese American organizations from pre-war until his death in 1953. At the time, he was an internationally known painter and graphic artist, but sadly is not well known now, particularly in the Japanese American community.

Becoming American? is the first scholarly book in over two decades to offer a critical evaluation of the pivotal art of Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

We asked one of our volunteer writers to interview Dr. Wang about the book for our Discover Nikkei website:

Becoming American? Reintroducing Issei Artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi >>

For more info about the program on September 24 >>