Summer Festival coming up this Saturday!

14th Annual Summer Festival on the Courtyard - Japanese American Olympics. Saturday, August 11, 2012. 11am-5pm. FREE ADMISSION ALL DAY!

Our 14th Annual Summer Festival on the Courtyard is this weekend!

Sporty Courtyard Kaeru waving JANM flagSummer Festival is our BIGGEST event of the year. We’re preparing a full day of FREE family fun. If you couldn’t make it to London for the Summer Olympics, come out to JANM for the JA Olympics!

LOTS of free activities and crafts to keep kids of all ages busy all day, or just stop by in between checking out the various Nisei Week and Tanabata Festival festivities going on throughout Little Tokyo.

We’re especially excited about our Jan Ken Po TournamentJA Trivia Challenge, and Origami Design Contest! Compete for your chances to win a special JA Olympics medal & prizes!

Jan Ken Po Tournament

P.S. This month is also your last chance to come check out our very popular Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami and Xploration Lab 2012 exhibitions before they close on August 26th!

April Target FREE Family Saturday — Monster Mash!

Our next Target FREE Family Saturday theme is Monster Mash! Join us on April 14th from 11am-4pm for a full day of monster related fun & crafts for the whole family. It’s FREE ALL DAY!

At 2pm, artist, toy designer, and unofficial Kaiju* Toy and Art Ambassador Mark Nagata will talk about Kaiju toys and how they are made.

You may remember Mark from his participation in our Dreams to Dreams Custom Vinyl Toy Show in 2008 and the Year of the Labbit Custom Show in 2011.

Mark wrote an article for our Discover Nikkei website in 2007 that shared how he got interested in vinyl toys & monsters. (Read “Beyond Ultraman” >>)

 

In addition to Mark’s talk, join us for monster crafts, Kidding Around the Kitchen‘s Healthy Monster Mash Mix, face painting, caricatures, and origami.

Generously sponsored by Target, these special Saturdays are filled with fun activities giving families unique ways to learn, play, and grow together.

Check the full schedule >>

“Farewell to Manzanar” screening with Director John Korty!

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 >>

Drawing the Line opening tonight!

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!).

We’ll be “up in the air” at our next Target Free Family Saturday!

Autumn is here and that means JANM’s October 8th Target Free Family Saturday is right around the corner!  We took a little break in September to give everyone a chance to focus on the new school year. (Hope the year is off to a great start for all of our student friends out there!)  Now we’re ready for more fun with October’s “Up in the Air” theme.  Join us for kite making, a balloon artist, origami butterflies, and a tasty activity with Kidding Around in the Kitchen.  I can’t wait!  A complete schedule for the day can be found here.  Hope you can come!

Here’s a sample of one of the activities that we will be doing.  For now, this friendly balloon creature sits by himself in my at my desk but he’s looking forward to making more friends on October 8th!