'No Monument: In the Wake of the Japanese American Incarceration' at The Noguchi Museum, New York

Isamu Noguchi is among the artists to be featured in ‘No Monument: In the Wake of the Japanese American Incarceration’, a focused group exhibition guest curated by Genji Amino and Christina Hiromi Hobbs at The Noguchi Museum, New York. The exhibition marks the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 (signed on February 19, 1942), which authorized the forced removal and mass incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans by the United States government during World War II. A selection of works by Japanese American artists, some of whom were incarcerated and others whose lives were shaped indirectly by the widespread impact of the Executive Order, represents an array of photographic and sculptural experiments following an event which represents the height of anti-Japanese sentiment in the 20th century.

A small selection of works by as yet unidentified Japanese Americans in the concentration camps is included in the exhibition. These works currently reside in the collection of the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, and circulate as part of the traveling exhibition and remembrance project Contested Histories: Art and Artifacts from the Allen Hendershott Eaton Collection. These are presented alongside the work of Leo Amino (1911–1989), Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), Joseph Goto (1916–1994), Hiromu Kira (1898–1991), Toyo Miyatake (1895–1979), Patrick Nagatani (1945–2017), Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), Kay Sekimachi (b. 1926) and Toshiko Takaezu (1926–2011).