Currently on at The Lilley
A listing of exhibitions and collections has been provided below.
Resilience: A Sansei Sense of Legacy
September 5-November 15, 2024
In 1942, in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law Executive Order 9066. The law ordered the forced imprisonment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the United States, which has the second largest population of Japanese people living outside of Japan.
In the years following the order’s retraction at the end of WWII, expatriate Japanese families and individuals were forced to come to terms with lost property, the shame and indignation of incarceration, and the task of re-integration into a society that had expelled them. After their release from the incarceration camps that dotted the American West and Midwest during the war, Japanese Americans used the phrase Shikata ga nai— it cannot be helped— and the word gaman —to persevere and stay silent— to speak to their resilience against the losses they incurred at the behest of Roosevelt’s order.
Told from the point of view of Sansei (third generation) Japanese Americans, Resilience—A Sansei Sense of Legacy is an exhibition of eight artists whose work reflects on the effect of EO9066 as it resonated from generation to generation. While several of the artists in Resilience employ traditional Japanese methods in the construction of their work, others use iconography relating to Japanese culture as a jumping-off point for personal explorations on the subject of the incarceration camps. Each in their own way, the artists in this exhibition express moments of deeply felt pain and reluctant acceptance, emotions which were often withheld by their elders. Co-curated by artist Jerry Takigawa and Gail Enns, Resilience was conceived to serve as a catalyst to cultivate social dialog and change around the issues of racism, hysteria and economic exploitation still alive in America today. The artists featured in Resilience were selected because of their personal connection to the subject matter, because their work is well respected within the Japanese American community as well as within the art world, and because of their activism on the subject of incarceration camps.
Support for this exhibition comes from the City of Reno Arts and Culture Commission, Nevada Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Nevada Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Friends of the Lilley Museum, Core Humanities at the College of Liberal Arts, the Associated Students of the University of Nevada (ASUN), and DigiPrint Corporation.
Connor Fogal | Emerald Bay at the Front Door Gallery
Ongoing
Emerald Bay by Connor Fogal is an expansive mural project that will be installed in the Front Door Gallery, on now. Visit the site and watch the artist paint.
Connor Fogal is a portrait and mural artist from Reno, Nevada. Fogal was born with Cerebral Palsy, which affects his physical mobility and speech. With a painting career that spans 20 years, Fogal uses a head-pointer paintbrush to create elaborate mural projects and has been commissioned to paint at Options Veterinary Hospital, the Historic Lake Mansion, and for private commission. His artistic influences include Edward Hopper and Vincent Van Gogh.