The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts From the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942–1946

Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Through Jan. 30, 2011

“Gaman” is a Japanese word that “signifies suffering with dignity,” said Virginie Montet in Agence France-Presse. It was a quality that Japanese-Americans had to cultivate during World War II, when the U.S. government forcibly interned more than 120,000 of them in camps. To furnish their spare accommodations—and simply to pass the time—internees created a surprising variety of artwork, craft items, and other decorative objects. A new exhibition at Washington, D.C.’s Renwick Gallery brings together more than 100 examples, many of them on loan from former detainees or their families. The resourcefulness and creativity of these mostly anonymous craftspeople was astonishing. Items as diverse as toys, jewelry, and musical instruments were “crafted from whatever materials or scraps could be found at the various camps.”

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As historical artifacts, these works “give texture to the improvised social life” of camp life, said Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. But they’re also evidence of a remarkable “explosion of the aesthetic impulse” that seems to have been a reaction to physical confinement. “Elaborately woven vases” were made from wire, paper, and shellac, while seeds, beans, and shells were fashioned into “pins and corsages that would pass muster at any Washington diplomatic reception.” Meanwhile, the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging was carried on using “unfading blooms made from pipe cleaners.” A few works here are by well-known artists—notably abstract sculptor Isamu Noguchi—yet “the most powerful” are those whose makers remain unknown. One watercolor landscape shows the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with the Manzanar internment camp barely visible in the background—“an expression of hope, perhaps, that the latter will fade in reality, as it seems to do visually in the painting.”