Robert L. Lynch, President for Americans for the Arts, once wrote, “The arts give a voice to the voiceless. The arts help transform American communities and, as I often say, the result can be a better child, a better town, a better nation and certainly a better world.” Humans throughout history have connected and emoted through the personal expression that is art. And on Thursday Oct. 10th, Smith community members and students connected with the Smith College Museum of Art exhibit, Defiant Vision: Prints & Poetry by Munio Makuuchi, through the use of poetry.
Partnering with the Mwangi Center, SCMA hosted “Defiant Poetry Night” where those interested in the current exhibit were invited to the Museum for a night of poetry. “The topics Makuuchi was interested in are always relatable, and Smith’s focus on Equity and Inclusion encourages us to surface different narratives–stories that have been overlooked,” Aprile Gallant, Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs for the Smith Museum of Art, said in regard to the connection between Smith and Makuuchi.
“I discovered Makuuchi’s poetry and reproductions of art in a closet in Greenpoint, New York in 2006,” Professor Floyd Cheung, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, told those attending the Defiant Poetry Night at the beginning of the event. Cheung for the last twenty years has been working to recover lost or forgotten Asian American artists and writers. It was through this search that he was approached by Fred Ho, a musician-activist, who showed him Makuuchi’s work. Cheung then showed Gallant a 258-page photocopied manuscript of Makuuchi’s writing and illustrations. After acquiring this manuscript, titled “From Lake Minidoka to Lake Mendota and Back to the Northwest Sea“, Gallant spent the next thirteen years leading Smith College Museum of Art in becoming the largest institution holder of Makuuchi’s work.
“I think in general he was interested in human experience: psychology, relationships and the way human societies operate often go wrong,” Gallant said in regard to the topics of Makuuchi’s work, which stemmed from his generally dark life experiences. After having been forced into a Japanese Internment camp from 1942 to 1945 in Idaho, Makuuchi went on to join the army. He then earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder and two Master of Fine-arts degrees at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Makuuchi eventually married and had a son, but his art illustrates the emotional battles he faced his entire life.
“He was thorny,” Professor Cheung added when speaking during the Defiant Poetry Night. Makuuchi’s work pushed the boundaries through his drypoint technique for printmaking, use of dark colors, lack of desire to make monetary profit and by discussing his childhood experience of the internment camp at a time when not many Japanese Americans had done so. As Cheung explains, “His work gets us to think about the incarceration through a child’s eyes — a particularly timely intervention given our government’s current detention of child migrants at the southern US border.” Both Makuuchi’s poetry and art deal with tumultuous family relationships, feelings of isolation, fear and perhaps anger.
But the Defiant Poetry Night strived to make this intense art accessible to a broader audience. Paula Lopez, Sacerdote Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Museum Education at Smith Museum of Art, led attendees in exploring the exhibit and writing down words they associated with the work. Music played as students and faculty wandered the space, talking to each other occasionally, but mostly taking in the art. Lopez then brought out large slips of white paper on which attendees were asked to write a sentence. Other museum education volunteers helping to run the event handed out colored pencils for those wishing to enliven their text or add drawings. Sitting in a circle, attendees placed their sentences on the floor to make a paragraph. Someone eventually read the collection out loud as others read along. Finally, Lopez asked everyone to write a poem about any single Makuuchi piece. The night concluded with snacks, drinks, and an open microphone for people wishing to share their poem.
“It was really cool to interact with the art through poetry, to see how you can take what you see visually and put it into words, and to take inspiration from how the artist views things,” Kendall Al-Bashir ’22 said when reflecting on the event. She later added, “The idea of defiance can be a really big theme at Smith. Just going outside of the box and going against what people are telling you you should do is something a lot of Smithies think about and do really well.”
The Defiant Poetry Night highlighted the life of Makuuchi and gave insight into how the collection came to be. Furthermore, by providing a space for people to explore and respond to art together, the night also became about connecting as a community. As Cheung eloquently explains, “Makuuchi once closed a letter with the words ‘May the arts move people’s hearts.’ He truly believed that art and poetry could change the way that we all perceive and interact with history, nature and each other.”
The exhibit will be on display until December 8th at the Smith College Museum of Art.
