A Challenge to Democracy explores
legacy of Japanese internment camps
Sons of Ansel Adams and Chiura Obata to discuss
impact on their respective families Oct. 2
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By Liam Otten
Sept. 17,
2009 --
In the 1930s, the photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with
California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set
these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths
that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous "war
relocation centers" at which the U.S. government forcibly interred
approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans.
Next month their sons — Michael Adams and Gyo Obata — will
explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public
dialog at Washington University in St. Louis.
| |
Ansel Adams,
Smiling Girl (Oriental Type), 1943. Courtesy Library of Congress,
Prints & Photographs Division. |
The talk, which begins at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in Steinberg Hall
Auditorium, is held in conjunction with the exhibition A Challenge to
Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans During World War
II, on view in the Teaching Gallery of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum. An exhibition reception will immediately follow the talk, from 7
to 9 p.m.
"The first-person accounts of Michael and Gyo — along with those
Japanese-Americans who were interned in the camps that we will hear from
later in the semester — bring to life this tumultuous period in
American history," says Ira J. Kodner, M.D., director of the university's
Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values, which organized both
events as part of the semester-long series "Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge
to Democracy."
"Events from this past summer — when grade school children were
ejected from a swimming pool in Philadelphia and Harvard professor [Henry
Louis] Gates was arrested at his home — demonstrate the need for
continued vigilance against ethnic and racial profiling in our own time,"
Kodner adds. "We are honored by the participation of so many people from
around the community who have come together to make this series possible."
Michael Adams, an alumnus of the Washington University School of
Medicine, was born and raised in the Yosemite Valley, site and subject of
many of his father's most famous photographs. There, his parents ran a
small gallery, Best's Studio, which also showed paintings and prints of
the park by Chiura Obata. In addition, both Ansel and Chiura taught summer
classes through the gallery and they often spent evenings together, sitting
and talking over drinks.
"The Obata and Adams families were good friends long before the war,"
Adams remembers. "The Obatas camped in Yosemite Valley each year and we
stored their camping equipment for them in our garage over the winter."
Though just a child at the time, he remembers summer visits by the teenage
Gyo and his sister. "I am sure we all had meals together," Adams adds.
At the start of the war, Gyo had just begun classes at the University
of California, Berkeley, where his father taught painting. However, to
avoid internment he transferred to Washington University's School of
Architecture, which, as an inland institution, was allowed to accept
Japanese-American students.
"I left Berkeley the night before my whole family was interred," Obata
remembers. "Washington University was one of the few colleges that
accepted Japanese-Americans." He adds that, had the telegram announcing
his acceptance arrived one day later, "I'd have been sent to the camps
too."
Instead, Obata finished his education in St. Louis. In 1955, he joined
with fellow architecture alumni George Hellmuth and George Kassabaum to
form Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum. The firm, which remains based in St.
Louis, is among the largest in the world today.
| |
Chiura Obata,
Silent Moonlight at Tanforan Relocation Center, 1942. Private
collection |
Yet the rest of the Obata family, unable to avoid interment, was sent
first to the Tanforan detention center and then to the Topaz Relocation
Center in Utah. There, Chiura made the best of a bad situation by
establishing an art school. Meanwhile, Ansel Adams departed from his
characteristic landscapes to document life in another of the camps —
images he then collected in the book Born Free and Equal: Photographs
of the Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center in Inyo
County, California (1944).
"We, as citizens, can agitate for tolerance and fair play, but our
agitation must be dynamic and persistent," Adams wrote in his accompanying
essay. "It is easy for a 'fair-weather lover of the Constitution' to
'favor' tolerance, and mouth the principles of democracy, but it is quite
another thing to stand up against opposition and fight for principles."
Several of Adams' Manzanar photographs, along with paintings by Chiura
Obata, will be featured in the A Challenge to Democracy
exhibition, which opens immediately after the talk. Jointly curated by
Angela Miller, professor of Art History & Archaeology in Arts &
Sciences, and doctoral students Elissa Weichbrodt and Anna Warbelow, the
exhibit will explore the pervasive nature of ethnic profiling through a
variety of visual records and materials.
The exhibition's first section, "Profile of the Enemy," consists of
popular materials, including political cartoons, magazine covers and a
government-issued handbook, that depict ethnically Japanese people as
villainous. By contrast, the second section, "Profile of the Patriot,"
features images by Adams, Dorothea Lange, Clem Albers and others who
portrayed Japanese-Americans as loyal citizens. The final section,
"Resisting Profiles," examines how Japanese-American artists, including
Obata, Toyo Miyatake, Mine Okubo and Gene Sogioka, responded to their own
internment — responses that ranged from subtle forms of resistance
to outright protest.
Other events will include a lecture and slideshow by Michael Adams,
titled "Ansel Adams: Photographs of Manzanar and the West," which takes
place at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, in the Kemper Art Museum.
Two performances of Rick Foster's one-man-play Dust Storm: Art and
Survival in a Time of Paranoia, which uses the art of Chiura Obata as
background, will star actor Zachary Drake. The shows will begin at 8 p.m.
Oct. 3 and at 4 p.m. Oct. 4, in Steinberg Hall.
Finally, Kimi Kodani Hill, Chiura's granddaughter, will lecture on "The
Art and Life of Chiura Obata" at 2 p.m. Oct. 4 in the Kemper Art Museum.
Hill is the author of Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment
(2000). Copies will be available for sale in the museum bookshop, with
a book-signing to follow.
All events are free and open to the public. Steinberg Hall and the
Kemper Art Museum are located adjacent to one another near the
intersection of Forsyth and Skinker boulevards. Regular museum hours are
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Fridays; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The museum is closed
Tuesdays.
For more information about the Ethnic Profiling Series, call (314)
935-9358 or visit humanvalues.wustl.edu.
For directions to the events and parking, please see the campus map.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
OCT. 2-4
6 p.m. October 2
Discussion
Michael Adams and Gyo Obata
"Remembering the Internment: A Conversation by the Son's of Chiura
Obata and Ansel Adams"
Steinberg Auditorium
7 to 9 p.m. October 2
Exhibition reception
A Challenge to Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans
During World War II
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
2 p.m. October 3
Lecture
Michael Adams
"Ansel Adams: Photographs of Manzanar and the West"
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
8 p.m. October 3
4 p.m. October 4
Performance
Dust Storm: Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia
Steinberg Auditorium
2 p.m. October 4
Lecture
"The Art and Life of Chiura Obata"
Kimi Kodani Hill
Steinberg Auditorium
Editor's Note: High-resolution images are available upon
request.