The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC) has been awarded $50,000 from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for a spring 2023 Curatorial Research Fellowship.
This award will support the development of the forthcoming, fall 2025 transdisciplinary exhibition, “Hirokazu Kosaka: Art and Asymmetry,” whichwill contextualize the evolution of the artmaking of JACCC’s master artist in residence. Guest curator Julie Lazar will investigate Kosaka’s solo visual, sound, landscape, and body experiments of the early 1970s to his current large-scale, collaborative, and socially involved projects that seamlessly incorporate contemporary art concepts with ideas and traditions of calligraphy, Zen archery, enso painting, noh drama, bunraku puppetry and kabuki theater as well as Shingon Buddhism.
JACCC’s project was featured within the larger announcement from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with spring 2023 grant awards totaling more than $4 million to 49 arts organizations and museums.
“The spring 2023 grantees have demonstrated admirable dedication to nurturing experimental artistic practice, providing artists with platforms from which to participate in critical cultural exchanges,” stated Joel Wachs, president. “The foundation’s support empowers institutions and the artists they serve to revisit and question accepted histories, highlight overlooked and underrepresented voices, and promote innovation and creativity.”
“We are delighted to receive The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ generous support for this undertaking focusing on Hirokazu Kosaka’s art and life,” said Patricia Wyatt, JACCC president and CEO. “Hirokazu was honored with the President’s Award at our June 2023 Anniversary Dinner. An in-depth presentation of his visual art and performance is well-deserved and will be of great interest to all those whom he has inspired over his four decades at JACCC and in Little Tokyo.”
In accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, the mission of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is the advancement of the visual arts. The foundation manages a dynamic grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonné projects. To date, the foundation has given $280 million in cash grants to over 1,000 arts organizations in 49 states and abroad and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322 institutions worldwide.
For information on other projects included in the grant announcement, visit warholfoundation.org.
Julie Lazar is an independent curator based in Northern California who served as a founding curator and director of experimental programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from 1982-2000.
Founded in 1972, the JACCC is one of the largest ethnic arts and cultural centers of its kind in the U.S. It weaves Japanese and Japanese American arts and culture into the fabric of our communities. JACCC remains firmly rooted in Little Tokyo, providing a vital place to build connections between people and cultures, locally and internationally. Through inclusive programs and authentic experiences, it continue its traditions and nurture the next generation of innovative artists, culture-bearers, and thinkers.