Public Programs

Out of Many
A Multicultural Festival of Music, Dance, and Story

Saturday-Monday, January 17-19, 2009
National Museum of the American Indian
4th Street and Independence Avenue
Metro: L'Enfant Plaza (all lines but Red)
or Federal Center SW (Blue/Orange lines)

A message from Secretary G. Wayne Clough:

Welcome to "Out of Many: A Multicultural Festival of Music, Dance, and Story." This is a program the Smithsonian is uniquely able to offer, and we are proud to do so. There is so much to experience and enjoy in this exciting three-day festival celebrating the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. I think the whole family will be delighted and inspired.

As only it can, the Smithsonian is determined to tell the story of all Americans to every American. We do that in a variety of ways, through our vast and varied collections, our many museums and research centers, education and outreach programs, and traveling exhibitions and affiliate museums all across the country. We are committed to presenting the many contributions of our nation from its many cultures. Walt Whitman once called ours a "nation of nations," and he was right. The first nations here were comprised of its Native peoples. We celebrate the vitality of our Native cultures in the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)—and our other museums and programs. There is great strength and significance when we band together to document the diversity of our nation. That is exactly what we are doing here.

For this festival, NMAI has partnered with the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Latino Center, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, and the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Together, we offer you: traditional music and dance from Cambodia, African dancers from Senegal, Cherokee storytellers, a mariachi ensemble, Native Hawaiian music and dance, traditional Irish music accompanied by championship Irish step dancers, Jewish traditional/jazz/fusion music, a Navajo blues and rock band, a hearing-impaired dance troupe, a Tlingit group from Juneau, Alaska, and so much more. You would be hard-pressed to find such quality and diversity anywhere else. It is part of our commitment to present all the contributions of our many cultures that collectively make us one strong, vibrant nation. Enjoy the music, dance, and stories, and please come back and visit us again soon.

G. Wayne Clough
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution

For more information, visit the National Museum of the American Indian [NMAI] website.

Presidential Pearl Inaugural Gala

Monday, January 19, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Mandarin Oriental
1330 Maryland Avenue, SW

The Presidential Pearl Inaugural Gala on January 19, 2009, celebrates the long-anticipated inauguration of what arguably is the election of our first Asian Pacific American president! He was, after all, born and raised in Hawai'i, has a hapa sister, an Indonesian stepfather as well as an extended Asian Pacific American family.

While the gala itself is completely sold out—who wouldn't want to be a part of history?—the Gala Committee will be selling and auctioning the Presidential Commemorative Collection by Diamond Cutters International.

Proceeds from the sale and auction will generously benefit the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.

For more information, visit www.pearlgala.com or read the press release.

Annual Day of Remembrance at the Smithsonian
The Japanese American Experience in Print

Thursday, February 19, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Rasmuson Theater
National Museum of the American Indian
Fourth Street & Independence Avenue, SW
Metro: L'Enfant Plaza (all lines except Red); exit Maryland Avenue/Smithsonian Museums

To mark the 67th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which led to the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program welcomes three distinguished writers to talk about their recent titles highlighting the Japanese American experience.

David Mura, already an established nonfiction writer, presents his debut novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, about a self-proclaimed itinerant historian who must delve into his own family's past—populated by both a 442nd survivor with a Purple Heart and a No-No Boy—to understand how his parents' youthful experiences shaped not only their lives, but lives of subsequent generations to come.

Kiyo Sato arrives with her award-winning memoir, Dandelion Through the Crack: The Sato Family Quest for the American Dream, which will be republished next spring as Kiyo's Story: A Japanese Family's Quest for the American Dream. The memoir captures the experiences of a Japanese American family from California, who survives the Great Depression, only to live through the challenges of being imprisoned at Poston Relocation Camp during World War II.

Shirley Castelnuovo brings her recent non-fiction title, Soldiers of Conscience: Japanese American Military Resisters in World War II, which tells the story of men who were deployed in a segregated battalion in the U.S. Army to mop up after other units had damaged property during training missions in the United States. These resisters were used in this fashion after protesting the mass imprisonment of their Japanese American families during WWII. Additionally, the Smithsonian APA Program is honored to welcome as a program guest the accomplished Cedrick Shimo, one of the resisters, who also wrote the book's foreword.

Come join us for an illuminating evening offering distinctly different perspectives of the Japanese American experience during World War II. Our very own APA Program Director, Dr. Franklin Odo, himself a renowned historian, will moderate this lively discussion.

This event is co-sponsored by the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation and the Japanese American Citizens League.

Operation Babylift
Saving Children from the Vietnam War

Monday, April 27, 2009, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Ring Auditorium
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at 7th Street, SW
Metro Stop: Smithsonian or L'Enfant Plaza

April 2009 marks the 34th anniversary of "Operation Babylift" (OBL), an extraordinary humanitarian effort that provided for the evacuation of over 2,500 Vietnamese War orphans during the final weeks of the Vietnam War.

Prior to OBL, international adoptions in the United States were infrequent and required an individual Act of Congress for each prospective adoptive family. OBL, by allowing a large number of international adoptees to enter the United States via parolee visa, changed the "complexion" of the United States and ushered in the era of international adoption still prevalent today.

The program's participants include Lana Mae Noone, OBL activist, adoptive mother, and author of Global Mom: Notes from a Pioneer Adoptive Family; Jennifer Nguyen Noone, who was the final baby placed with a waiting family by OBL; Ross Meador, who was the field director for Friends of Children of Vietnam during OBL, who placed 57 orphans on board the inaugural OBL flight; LeAnn Thieman, adoptive mother and author of This Must Be My Brother, as well as co-author of 10 titles in the popular Chicken Soup for the… series; and Philip R. Wise, a retired U.S. Air Force Sergeant who survived a tragic OBL plane crash.

Additionally, a temporary art and artifacts exhibit will be on display, including the Vietnam Babylift Quilt created from remnants of clothing worn by the orphans, original clothing, photos, materials, and the speakers' personal artifacts.

Call for Papers
"A Long and Tumultuous Relationship"
East-West Interchanges in American Art

Thursday-Friday, October 1-2, 2009
Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and F Streets, NW
Metro: Gallery Place-Chinatown

Paper submissions are invited for this symposium, which will address the complicated interactions between American and Asian artists and visual traditions from the 18th century to the present. Scholars are encouraged to send in proposals engaging all media of visual art, and including craft, architecture, and the moving image. Original, innovative scholarship is sought investigating all manner of artistic interchanges, including issues of patronage, art markets, and popular culture, and engaging a wide range of geographic sites where these exchanges took place.

The title for our symposium stems from the writings of Bert Winther-Tamaki, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who talks in his book, Art in the Encounter of Nations, about the need to avoid merely binary understandings of U.S.-Asian cultural exchanges and to steer clear of expectations that East and West have "core characteristics." Earlier scholarship often has looked at the Asian influence on American art as a unidirectional and limited development, suggesting that Asian culture was unchanging and monolithic while characterizing American artists as dynamic and original in their ability to absorb and meld the best of diverse cultures. This symposium aims to consider instead what Winther-Tamaki calls the "contentious interdependency" born out of a "long and tumultuous relationship" between these cultures.

Scholarship is invited that complicates or reimagines the historical meanings of "East" and "West" as well as terms such as "orientalism" through the prism of multi-directional cultural exchange. The symposium will recognize that the "East" is made up of a wide variety of countries—not just Japan and China, whose influence on American art has been most discussed to date. In addition to high-art visual exchanges, interdisciplinary explorations of immigration, border cultures, and transnational flows in popular culture are welcome.

"A Long and Tumultuous Relationship": East-West Interchanges in American Art is being organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in partnership with the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art/Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, and is supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

To submit a paper, please send a two-page, double-spaced abstract (300-500 words) and a short CV to East-West Symposium, Smithsonian American Art Museum, P.O. Box 37012, Victor Building, MRC 970, Washington D.C. 20013-7012. Proposals may also be submitted via e-mail to SAAMSymposium@si.edu.

Proposals must be received by February 20, 2009. Confirmed speakers will be required to submit the text of their 20-minute symposium presentations by September 1, 2009. A final text of the essay with endnotes will be due by January 5, 2010, for possible publication in the symposium proceedings. The symposium will be available for viewing in a simultaneous and, later, an archived webcast.