Dorothea Lange: The War Relocation Authority Assignment

February 7, 2021 - May 13, 2021
Mānoa Campus, John Young Museum of Art, Krauss Hall 002 Add to Calendar

The John Young Museum of Art, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, is proud to present for the first time in Hawai‘i the exhibition "Dorothea Lange: The War Relocation Authority Assignment." The exhibition will be on view February 7 – May 13, 2021.

Dorothea Lange worked for the federal government to document the relocation and internment of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Unlike her much better-known work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) which took place in the 1930s, these images were commissioned by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), the government agency with which Lange sustained a critical relationship. In 1942 Lange took some 800 images that documented the loss of civil liberties and property, followed by the confinement that affected the generations of nisei- and sansei- Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned through no act of their own, but because of their Japanese ancestry. Deposited in the National Archives, these images were among Lange’s least-known photographs and went largely unnoticed until 1972, when 27 of them were included in a book published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Since then, they have quietly become defining documents in the history of immigrant rights in America.

Image: Dorothea Lange. "Pledge of Allegiance, San Francisco," 1942.


Ticket Information
Admission is free. Following current covid-19 protocols. Gallery hours: Mon. – Thurs. 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Sun. 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., Closed Fri., Sat.; Feb. 15; Mar. 15–19; Mar. 26; Apr. 4.

Event Sponsor
Art & Art History, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Sharon Tasaka, 808-956-8364, gallery@hawaii.edu, https://hawaii.edu/art/dorothea-lange/

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