Presidio Dialogues: Isamu Noguchi: Self Interned, 1942

Isamu Noguchi was one of the first bi-racial, pointedly multi-cultural artists in American history, and is still one of the most influential. He voluntarily interned himself in Poston War Relocation Center with other Japanese Americans although he was not ordered to the camp. Born to an American mother of European descent and a Japanese father, and raised and educated in the United States, Japan, and Europe, and thanks to his seminal friendship with Buckminster Fuller, Noguchi thought of himself as a citizen of Spaceship Earth. In the lead-up to World War II and in its aftermath, his sense of mission as a cultural synthesizer and bridge was strained to the breaking point. Presenter Dakin Hart is Senior Curator at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum (Long Island City, NY), where he oversees the Museum’s exhibitions, collections, catalogue raisonné, archives, and public programming.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Exclusion: The Presidio’s Role in World War II Japanese American Incarceration.