Japanese American National Museum

Admittedly, when I first heard about this exhibit I was intrigued. All I heard was that there would be some contemporary Japanese art. Good enough, right? And when it's recommended by someone you know then you tend to give more creedence, but this was a friend of a friend recommendation. I know, pretty perilous and I should have known better.

First off...it's funny how often I let myself get tricked by things like that. So and so says this movie or book or whatever is great, you'll probably like it. Well, unless that so and so is Dave, or someone who knows me inside and out, then I probably shouldn't give too much weight to another person's judgment because simply put, it's not my own. Therefore it's not necessarily my taste. Not to say that I can't take recommendations, I just shouldn't be so surprised sometimes when I'm not as satisfied as I thought I might be.

The museum was very small and the exhibit we were going to see, The Giant Robot Biennale, was really brief, even by that museum's standards. It was basically two rooms of some cover art on the walls. I liked some of the stuff, but most of it just seemed really strange to me. I don't know if there is any modern art that I'm really excited about, not that I even have that much exposure to it.

One part that I did really enjoy, however, was the display on Japanese Internment Camps. One quote in particular stuck out to me. I liked it enough to actually write it down on paper and include it here:

The achievement of redress demonstrates how the actions against one community came to be understood as a violation of the freedoms and liberties of all Americans.

I liked that because I think it eloquently expresses the interconnectedness we share with others, whether we're consciously aware of it or not. Sometimes I'm not very sympathetic to pains that persons of specific groups sometimes express. This just helped me to remember that often our collective fate has great bearing on our individual lives.

I wish that I would have learned earlier about the Dali exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art before it wrapped up last weekend. Not only did it have The Persistence of Memory on display, but it was a film and painting exhibit. Let's all keep our ears to the ground for all the good stuff that's out there people.