Art of Japanese American Internment Camps Liberated form the Market

 

 

The forcible relocation and interment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent - indeed whole families - in camps in isolated parts of the mid- and far west stands as a black mark of American history and civil liberties (similar internments happened in Canada as well).

This history was brought back into focus recently when over 450 artworks made by the incarcerated were brought up for auction, generating great controversy and an online drive to have the auction halted.

Halted it was, and now the Japanese American National Museum has acquired them as part of their collection.  The winding story of these artifacts touches on many issues of traumatic histories, lost (and refound) traces, as well as fundamentally who "owns" the right to such crucial personal artifacts, as commodities versus as collective cultural objects...

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