College Art Association Conference Panel
“The Virtual Asian American Art Museum: Postwar Japanese American Art in Chicago”
Wednesday, February 21, 2018, 2:00-3:30pm
Room 503, Los Angeles Convention Center
“The Virtual Asian American Art Museum: Postwar Japanese American Art in Chicago”
Wednesday, February 21, 2018, 2:00-3:30pm
Room 503, Los Angeles Convention Center
“Chicago: Someday, Somewhere – the Photography of James Numata and Yasuhiro Ishimoto”
Jasmine Alinder, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
John Tain, Asia Art Archive
Jasmine Alinder, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
John Tain, Asia Art Archive
“Ray Yoshida’s Museum of Extraordinary Values”
Karen Patterson, John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Karen Patterson, John Michael Kohler Arts Center
“Michiko Itatani: Painting the Cosmic Novel”
(Chair) Laura Kina, DePaul University
(Chair) Laura Kina, DePaul University
Abstract:
This panel focuses on the work and transnational lives of four Japanese American postwar artists—James Numata (1918–1997), Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012), Ray Yoshida (1930–2009), and Michiko Itatani (1948–)—featured in the “Chicago-Midwest” module of The Virtual Asian American Art Museum (VAAAM). VAAAM is a large-scale digital humanities project led by New York University Asian/Pacific/American Institute (A/P/A) and the New York University Division of Libraries in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and the Getty Research Institute that features enhanced access to an array of art and tools for presenting new collaborative scholarship on Asian American art history.
This panel focuses on the work and transnational lives of four Japanese American postwar artists—James Numata (1918–1997), Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012), Ray Yoshida (1930–2009), and Michiko Itatani (1948–)—featured in the “Chicago-Midwest” module of The Virtual Asian American Art Museum (VAAAM). VAAAM is a large-scale digital humanities project led by New York University Asian/Pacific/American Institute (A/P/A) and the New York University Division of Libraries in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and the Getty Research Institute that features enhanced access to an array of art and tools for presenting new collaborative scholarship on Asian American art history.
The “Chicago-Midwest” module geospatially maps the careers of artists in Chicago against known social patterns and settlements in the city. The first portion of this scalable module is a series of submodules highlighting Japanese American artists whose biographies reflect immigration and migration paths of Japanese to Chicago including pre-WWII labor migration, post-WWII Japanese American internment camp resettlement, migration from Hawaii to Chicago, and post-1965 immigration from Japan. The role that institutions such as the Institute of Design and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago had in drawing artists from around the world is examined, as is the role of archives and collections, such as those of the Japanese American Service Committee and the Art Institute of Chicago, in recording and preserving their histories. These artists are historically and/or artistically significant, but have been underrepresented in the canon of art history and master narrative of the Japanese American experience.
