Wednesday, September 20, 2017

That Day Now: Shadows Cast by Hiroshima
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

A changing project room of curated objects and original works

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing as many as 200,000 people, severely injuring countless more, and immediately raising the specter, still with us, of total annihilation. Three days later Nagasaki, Japan, suffered the same fate. The impact of these bombings on the way we view the world cannot be understated. Historian Robert Jay Lifton has written: "You cannot understand the twentieth century without Hiroshima."

Yet, how exactly do we regard Hiroshima (understood not only as referring collectively to both the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also all such possible catastrophes to come), particularly as it fades in cultural memory? How can we find its present urgency? This exhibition is one humble attempt to grapple with this difficult question. It takes the form of a project room that will undergo three transformations between August 19 and November 26.

For the first phase of the exhibition (August 19-October 18), Syracuse University Professors Yutaka Sho, Susannah Sayler, and Edward Morris have curated images and objects from Syracuse University and Everson collections that were created in 1945, the year that bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of these images and objects were made with Hiroshima specifically in mind. Some of them relate directly to the war; some of them do not. Together, however, they form a montage made from the artifacts of history and bear upon the spirit of the times in a way that could not be accomplished by a direct or literal treatment. The montage needs to be activated with reflection.

Students in a studio class taught by Professors Sho and Morris will continue to transform the exhibition in two additional phases, opening on October 18 and November 16 respectively.

The exhibition is part of a larger program at Syracuse University and other locations in the city that centers around a visit in October of one survivor from Hiroshima, Keiko Ogura. Ms. Ogura was eight years old when the bomb fell, and she has since become the official A-bomb storyteller for the city of Hiroshima and tireless advocate for peace and nuclear nonproliferation issues that have gained an unexpected urgency in recent months.