Detailed Receipts on the Topaz Museum crisis

TOPAZ by Kimiko Marr

>> Drawing from primary source documents, this easy to read PDF by Kimiko Marr tells the whole story <<

Notable Highlights:

The Six Points

Part 10 – The Six Points (p. 40): On September 7, 2021, the Wakasa Memorial Committee sent its first official letter to the Topaz Museum Board, listing six measures that the Board could take to “remedy the problems that the Museum’s actions have given rise to.”

The Six Points (for collaborative solution)

1. Recognition of the Wakasa Memorial Committee and its Advisory Council
2. Apology for Desecration of the Memorial Site
3. Archaeological Assessment and Release of Video and Photography
4. Partnership and Consultation with the Wakasa Memorial Committee
5. Memorial Ceremony at the Topaz site
6. Mediation between Topaz Museum and Wakasa Memorial Committee

The points are further elaborated in Marr’s TOPAZ pdf.

National Trust Endorsement

National Trust for Historic Preservation

At face value, the six points seem to be reasonable and functional measures to enable a transparent process of shared decision making. This is confirmed when the Topaz Museum Board turns to the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) for outside consultation, starting on p 56.

But first, what is the NTHP?

“Congress chartered the National Trust in 1949 as a private, nonprofit membership organization to facilitate public participation in historic preservation, and to further the purposes of federal historic preservation laws. With the strong support of over one million members and supporters nationwide, the National Trust works to protect significant places representing our diverse cultural experience by taking direct action and inspiring broad public support.”

Mediation, MOA, Collaboration

In his letter to the Topaz Museum Board on September 21, 2021, Rob Nieweg, vice president of preservation services and outreach for NTHP makes the following points (emphasis added).

• First: “In the National Trust’s experience, consulting with stakeholders and planning with experts would have reduced or avoided harm to the Wakasa Monument and its Memorial Site.”
• Second: NTHP “asks whether the Museum, as the steward of Topaz, intends to consult with the communities of stakeholders and to plan with outside subject-matter experts […] The National Trust anticipates that experienced experts and interested stakeholders would be willing to help if the Museum were to ask.”
• “Third, the National Trust for Historic Preservation supports the newly formed Wakasa Memorial Committee’s constructive six-step proposal for a collaborative solution with the Topaz Museum. To that end, the National Trust highly recommends these initial steps by the Topaz Museum:
  • Initiate a mediation process among the Topaz Museum and the Wakasa Memorial Committee, utilizing an independent, professional, and mutually acceptable mediator;
  • Through mediation, establish a binding Memorandum of Agreement between the Topaz Museum and the Wakasa Memorial Committee, particularly to formalize communication, consultation, and shared decision making; and,
  • That the Topaz Museum publicly commit to collaborate with the Wakasa Memorial Committee to jointly plan the best ways to protect, preserve, and interpret the Wakasa Monument, its Memorial Site, and the Topaz National Historic Landmark.”

Rebuild Stakeholder Trust

Nieweg further clarifies “it seems that purposeful change is necessary to rebuild trust with Survivors, Descendants, and the Japanese American community…”

Nieweg concludes:

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation urges the Topaz Museum to commit itself to the Wakasa Memorial Committee’s six-step proposal of a collaborative and transparent pathway forward.”

Rob Nieweg, VP of Preservation Services and Outreach, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 9/15/21

Topaz Museum Board: No Mediation, No MOA, No Collaboration

“Perpetrators disregarded our views, beliefs, and rights because

colonialism instills the colonizer with a notion of absolute entitlement

— a notion that denies the colonized the respect and rights afforded

other humans.” 

James Riding In

In response to the Wakasa Memorial Committee’s request for outside mediation, sent September 7, 2021, the Topaz Museum Board replied on November 3:

“Since the Topaz Museum Board is hopeful that our discussions with the WMC can result in productive outcomes, we believe that any discussion of mediation and of identification of a specific mutually acceptable mediator is premature. In the unlikely event our hopes are misplaced, we would be open at a later time to consider, together with WMC, a facilitated process to expedite a way forward.”

Indeed, the Topaz Museum Board’s hopes were “misplaced”, as evidenced by their own words on April 8, 2022:

“We cannot continue to meet with a committee that professes to work cooperatively on the one hand, and then vilifies the Museum and spews vitriol on the other.”

Despite their own clearly demonstrated need and the urging by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Topaz Museum Board has refused to engage in mediation. No Memorandum of Agreement can be formalized, thus eliminating the possibility of stakeholder collaboration.

Basically, the Topaz Museum Board chooses to avoid any process that would require sharing decision-making power with its primary stakeholder/source community.

It’s the epitome of a colonial power relationship, characterized by:

• Violence: of taking without consent
• Extraction: of community resources for consolidation of private power
• Position: Who speaks, and who is silenced, in the narration of (Japanese American) history

The “End Around”: Community Outreach as PR Sham

Instead of entering into mediation as a good faith step towards rebuilding broken trust, the Topaz Board exercises colonial entitlement by attempting an “end-around” to marginalize the Wakasa Memorial Committee.

By seeking “advice and feedback from the greater Japanese American community” via the PR farce/ethical violation that is the Topaz “Community Outreach” Project, Topaz Museum Board tries, arrogantly and in vain, to summarily dismiss stakeholder concerns via their unilateral and oxymoronic declaration:

“What’s happened in the past is not relevant to how we’re going to move forward.”

Topaz “Community Outreach” Project leader, at “community outreach” meetings held on July 30 in Emeryville and August 13 in San Francisco

Ethically speaking, what does it mean when an archaeologist hired by a white-run museum tells an aggrieved racial group that the recently inflicted colonial violence is not relevant to the “community outreach” project?

"If you stick a knife in my back 9 in and pull it out 6 in, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They won’t even admit the knife is there" Malcolm X pic.twitter.com/BUAVtuejSb

— COMMON (@common) February 6, 2019

History Repeats Itself, unless…

Despite the institutional sloganeering of “Never Again,” Topaz Museum Board is operating with the same one-sided, colonial racial logic that made the camps possible in the first place.

But this is 2022, not 1942, and as more and more light is shined on this racially structured abuse of power (e.g. among state legislators, in mainstream media, professional networks such as American Alliance of Museums and Society for American Archaeology, national funding sources, and so on—i.e. in places where ethical standards matter), things are going to reflect badly on the Topaz Museum Board, if they continue to persist in their supremacist hubris.

A museum, even if privately held, operates as a public trust. There is no “moving forward” without restoring that broken trust, unless that movement is into state or federal receivership.

Links:

Petition for Transparency and Shared Stewardship

WMC Town Hall scheduled for September 9 @ 5p PT / 8p E

Wakasa Monument Town Hall on 9/9

Members of the Wakasa Memorial Committee will be hosting a town hall on Friday, September 9, 2022 at 5pm PST live (in person & remote) from JCCCNC, 1840 Sutter St, San Francisco. Live feed linked below.

They are prepared to answer any community questions about the Wakasa Monument.

If you would like to submit a question to be addressed by the committee, visit https://tinyurl.com/WakasaQuestions.

Topaz survivor, Patrick Hayashi, will moderate the event.

The Wakasa Memorial Committee is comprised of Topaz Survivors, Descendants, members of the Japanese American community and allies who came together in response to the sudden and unprofessional excavation of the Wakasa Memorial Monument on July 27, 2021 by the Topaz Museum.

Background Information

The Wakasa Monument: What It Is and Why It Matters, by John Ota

NPS Archaeologist Jeff Burton and Mary Farrell’s article on the Wakasa stone at Discover Nikkei

The Demolished Monument, by Nancy Ukai

Timeline of Events by Wakasa Memorial Committee

News coverage in Nichi Bei Weekly: Unearthing a monumental controversy: Removal of memorial to Topaz shooting victim enrages community

A conversation, hosted by Kimiko Marr, about the Wakasa stone and its excavation (featuring Patrick Hayashi, Claudia Katayanagi, Masako Takahashi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LYlCd8JY6Q

Petition demanding the Topaz Museum release the video of the excavation and to allow the National Park Service to lead a community excavation of the site

Wakasa Monument Petition and Video

Petition: https://chng.it/wfG9hgFy

Video by Emiko Omori (15 min.): on the one-year anniversary of the removal of the monument

Background

The Wakasa Monument: What It Is and Why It Matters, by John Ota

The Demolished Monument, by Nancy Ukai

Timeline of Events by Wakasa Memorial Committee

What is the Wakasa Monument?

It is a half-ton memorial stone thought to have been destroyed, but was rediscovered by National Park Service archaeologists in September 2020 where it had rested for 77 years in the site of the Topaz concentration camp.

The monument was erected by Issei incarcerees in the Topaz landscape crew in memory of James Hatsuaki Wakasa who, at age 63, was murdered by a camp sentry while walking his dog on the evening of April 11, 1943. The 19-year old white sentry who killed Wakasa with a single shot from a distance of over 300 yards, claimed it was a warning shot and was acquitted. (The acquittal is structurally consistent with other gun homicides committed by U.S. Army soldiers in WRA and DOJ camps in violation of the governing Geneva Convention of 1929.)

Camp administration ordered the monument destroyed but the Issei buried it instead.

Topaz descendant Nancy Ukai’s research was instrumental in enabling the discovery by archaeologists. Ukai found a map by George Shimamoto in the National Archives that showed the precise location of the monument. The NPS archaeologists who discovered the monument, Jeff Burton and Mary M. Farrell, published series of articles on their quest and results.

A month after the discovery, a 14-member committee convened to discuss the care and handling of the monument. It included National Park Service representatives, Japanese American community members, archeologists, and the director and two board members from the Topaz Museum.

The Problem

Without consulting the committee, the (historically white) Topaz Museum unilaterally chose to unearth the monument and take it to the museum, in the absence of archaeologists, historians, or Japanese American community members, on July 27, 2021. The removal was performed via forklift “by a contractor hired to clear trash from a separate part of the former concentration camp.”

A subsequent 60-page Condition Assessment Report by the National Park Service notes numerous fractures of the monument which “may have been exacerbated by the stone’s relocation.” It also notes damage to the site caused by mechanical equipment, and that, in the absence of archeologists, Topaz Museum chose to backfill the removal site.

This raises serious ethical concerns about stewardship, accountability to the ‘source’ (primary stakeholder) community, and violation of the public trust that is foundational to museum practice.

The Wakasa Memorial Committee is “comprised of Topaz Survivors, Descendants, members of the Japanese American community and allies who came together in response to the sudden and unprofessional excavation of the Wakasa Memorial Monument on July 27, 2021 by the Topaz Museum.”

According to the Wakasa Memorial Committee, the Topaz Museum Board made a video record of the unearthing, but has refused to allow it to be seen.

Petition: https://chng.it/wfG9hgFy

The petition urges “the Topaz Museum Board to respect Japanese American history by acknowledging and honoring two demands:

1. Release the video of the excavation of the monument so the truth of the event can be witnessed;

2. Allow the National Park Service to lead a Community Archaeology Project so that the place where one of our ancestors was murdered can receive professional assessment and handling with participation by students, Japanese American survivors and descendants and dedicated volunteers.”

White at the Museum

Empire & Ellison at ‘The Asian’

Passed by the Asian Art Museum the other day, where the Terracotta Warriors show is making way for this summer’s banner exhibition of imperialist japanophile Larry Ellison’s art collection, opening later this month.

Impressed with their gutsy guerrilla marketing! And the, ahem, “citizen spell-check.”

Museum pulls art critical of anti-immigrant policy

Click to view the art at PoliticAlabamaDesign.com

Via HuffPost:

Edward Noriega, a professor of Art and Design at Troy University in Alabama, had his artwork pulled from an exhibit earlier this month from Talladega’s Heritage Hall Museum because the directors objected to the content.

One piece featured stacked Ajax cans relabeled as an “ethnic cleanser” called “Ala, with HB 56,” a reference to the immigration crackdown passed by the Alabama legislature in 2011. Another piece shows an image of the Virgin Mary holding a dustpan and a broom in an empty office, over the title “Señora de la Limpieza,” or “Our Cleaning Lady.” An ashtray reads “Feed Me Get Out.”

But the kicker appears to have been a red square overlaid with a white swastika and the the abbreviation HB 56. The tips of the swastikas read “Presbyterian indifference, Baptist indifference, Catholic indifference, Methodist indifference.” [Full story here]

 

Ace Museum all in for the 1%: Videos from the Unknown Artists

More from the Unknown Artists: (previous posts 1, 2)

If you have a personal experience with Douglas Chrismas, Ace Gallery or Ace Museum, we encourage you to visit ArtLeaks (http://art-leaks.org/) and to leave your story.

Petition on Change.org: http://www.change.org/petitions/ace-museum-all-in-for-the-1

We are the Unknown Artists.
We expose economic interests.
We increase transparency.
We aim for the distribution of wealth and information.
We will not be censored.
We will not be stopped.
Fuck authorship, fix the system!

Tate à Tate interventionist audio tour of Tate museums

Platform, Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil present a site-specific sound artwork themed around the issue of BP sponsorship of Tate.

Tate á Tate is created by Ansuman Biswas (Tate Britain), Isa Suarez, Mae Martin and Mark McGowan (Tate Boat) and Phil England and Jim Welton (Tate Modern).

Tate à Tate website

Download the three-part audio tour and go to Tate Britain, Tate Boat and Tate Modern to participate in this interventionist sound artwork – or listen at home.

The site includes a How-To Guide and Workshops and Actions as well as an Introduction to oil sponsorship of the arts, with a link to the open publication Culture Beyond Oil.

FAQs

“Who Wants to Rule (over The 99%)?”

“I do!  I do!”

That’s what the Vsian Vrt Museum is hoping your kids will shout with glee after spending time in the museum’s new “Who Wants to Rule?” activity room.  As with previous brainchildren of the museum’s Education and Public Programs department, this activity room instills in our children the ideals of top-down rulership, class/caste hierarchy and exploitation, patriarchal dominance, and female servitude.

Welcome to Fantasyland: Become the Ruling 1% at The Asian Art Museum.

Privilege Made Popular?

All of this comes at a time when the entire world is watching public outrage against the ruling class spread from Occupy Wall Street to your hometown.

Privilege made popular, in the midst of growing populist uprising.  Is this what they really mean by “Asian for All”?

Shameless and seemingly never-ending, it’s uncanny how the Vsian’s educators get it oh-so-wrong every time.  Or completely natural when you consider that “lead funding for the Asian Art Museum’s Education and Public Programs is provided by the Bank of America Foundation.”

After all, who benefits most from the cultural privileging of privilege and inequality?

Audacity of Asian Art Museum's lead funder of Education and Public Programs

The museum’s new logo, an inverted A, is supposed to symbolize the unexpected, but in terms of cultural politics, it’s simply more of the same:  In 2009, the activity room was “Daimyo for a Day”, where your young child could play-act the role of samurai warlord, and the museum’s blog featured photos of adorably cute children exploited to promote activities like weapon-making [pdf], all while our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged on 8 years and counting.

Occupy Wall Street sign of the day: Sasha, 7, painting "Homes for the Homeless", from boingboing.net

V is for Vendetta

But this is the New Vsian, a fun, fresh break with the past, whose bold-faced agenda is unabashedly ticket sales/income generation, as widely reported in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

So much for the dream of a city-owned, taxpayer-funded, knowledge-based public museum whose primary duty is the stewardship of the cultural health and welfare of its communities, through the production of knowledge and creation of meaning.  In reality, it’s all about fully exploiting the strategies, tactics, and language of The Corporation, in the $400,000 Brand New Branding campaign which is all about marketing and money-making.

Society sacrifices its environment, education, and moral stance to just to try to become rich. — Ai Weiwei, preeminent Asian contemporary artist whose unlawful three month detention this spring was completely ignored by the Vsian Vrt Museum.

How have the financial ways and means of the ruling 1% and their ‘logic’ of bottom line greed become accepted or even celebrated as the driving force behind a civic institution whose primary function is putatively cultural and in service of the common, public good?

In the words of one effete cultural critic, “The ideological force of neoliberal culture has been amazingly effective.”

Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art censors “A Child’s View from Gaza”

[Update 10/3/11:  The exhibit opened at an alternate venue, a minute’s walk from MOCHA.

Thursday, September 29, 10:00am – Wednesday, November 30, 5:00pm

NEW VENUE! 917 Washington Street in Oakland

The exhibit will be open to the public

September 30-November 27

Fridays: 10am-3pm

Saturdays and Sundays: 12pm-6pm

More Info: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/oakland-ca-childs-view-gaza-exhibit]

Oakland's MOCHA denies Bay Area audiences the opportunity to view Palestinian children’s art