{"id":2189,"date":"2017-04-22T11:53:12","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T16:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2017-04-22T12:22:42","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T17:22:42","slug":"spring-exhibits-noguchi-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/explore-new-york\/spring-exhibits-noguchi-photography","title":{"rendered":"Spring Exhibits: Noguchi, Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the middle of extreme inhumanity, some of us go more deeply and courageously into our humanity and act from this place. The Japanese-American artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi brought the best of his humanity, dignity, and a sense of the capacity of beauty and art to elevate people during a horrendous time. He did so during World War II, when the United States federal government uprooted thousands of Japanese citizens and American citizens of Japanese descent living in the western states and forced them into internment camps. His example shines today, and one can see the fruits of his stance and art in a current exhibit at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens.<\/p>\n

While I am a walker in any season, spring in New York City seems to jump-start an opportunity to see new, or relatively new, exhibits. It\u2019s also a season in which many simply look up and around more in the warmer weather and notice street sightings of architecture and art. A great setting-off point to inspire that are the Noguchi exhibit examining the works of an artist dealing with World War II and three photography exhibits that portray New York in the immediate years after the war.<\/p>\n

The title of the Noguchi museum\u2019s exhibit tells a startling fact as a place to begin: “Self-Interned, 1942<\/a>.” Noguchi made an extraordinary decision in 1942 as he saw the government displacing others. He decided to place himself into one of the internment camps, the Poston War Relocation Center, situated in the Arizona desert. He did so despite being exempt from internment as a New York State resident. As Noguchi put it, \u201cThus I willfully became part of humanity uprooted.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a situation that took away the basic human rights of those of Japanese heritage, Noguchi believed that through his art and his ideas, he could elevate the existence and spirits of those so mistreated. As the Noguchi Museum notes, he hoped \u201cto contribute something positive to this forcibly displaced community, to which he had never felt more connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

To this undertaking, Noguchi brought not only hope but much imagination. For the Poston camp, he proposed and drew up blueprints for a Japanese garden, a botanical garden, an arts center, and a zoo, among other amenities, according to a Hyperallergic<\/em> story on the exhibit<\/a>. Meticulous and ambitious, he even researched various flowers that would beautify the surroundings, down to which would do better in each season.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Noguchi held a vision not only of the present but a better future beyond the camp. In the middle of the harshness and the stifling of human freedom and stimulation that the camp established, he suggested arts and crafts activities, training, and lectures. He believed that these programs would not only enrich the detainees\u2019 daily lives but lead to future exhibits and opportunities for them.<\/p>\n

Poston officials made some promises, but ultimately Noguchi received no support from them, or from officials from the U.S. War Relocation Authority or War Department. Those in authority never embraced Noguchi\u2019s ideas and blueprints, and none came to fruition. Noguchi\u2019s proposals personify a single man\u2019s endeavor to bring light in the face of darkness, to ameliorate the evil of intolerance and stereotyping, and instead create a life-enriching place.<\/p>\n

As Noguchi courageously volunteered for internment and sought to influence the Poston environment for the good, so it shaped him as an artist and person. The exhibit, which Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart curates, captures this development and the evolution and transformation of Noguchi\u2019s work. The exhibit encompasses works from the early 1940s to the mid-1980s. it opens with about a dozen sculptures from 1941 to 1944, covering the time from a year before Noguchi entered the camp until a year after he returned home to New York City. It\u2019s a key period in Noguchi\u2019s art, as the sculptural pieces together demonstrate Noguchi\u2019s transition from early figurative work to the modernist style for which the artist became known.<\/p>\n

\"Isamu<\/a>