WHO: Michael Adams, son of photographer Ansel Adams; and Gyo Obata, son of the painter Chiura Obata and cofounder of HOK, the world’s largest architecture firm, based in St. Louis.
WHAT: “Remembering the Internment: A Conversation by the Sons of Chiura Obata and Ansel Adams.”
WHERE: Washington University’s Steinberg Auditorium, located near the intersection of Forysth and Skiner Boulevards.
WHEN: 6-7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2. Reception to follow.
COST: Free and open to the public.
In the 1930s photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous “war relocation centers” at which the U.S. government forcibly interred approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans.
On Oct. 2 their sons, Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, will explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public dialog at Washington University in St. Louis. The talk is held in conjunction with the exhibition A Challenge to Democracy: Ethnic Profiling of Japanese Americans During World War II, on view in the Teaching Gallery of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Both the talk and the exhibition are part of the semester-long series “Ethnic Profiling: A Challenge to Democracy,” organized by the university’s Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values.
Click here for the full press release.
To arrange an interview or b-roll, call Liam Otten at (314) 935-8494 or email liam_otten@wustl.edu.