SAVE THE DATE!

JW Marriott Hotel at L.A. Live

With a special tribute to The Honorable Norman Y. Mineta, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation, in recognition of his continuing fight for civil rights, including the critical leadership role that he played on and after 9/11.

Visit the 2012 Dinner site for information >>

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2012 Lexus Opportunity Drawing
Win an All-New 2013 Lexus GS 450h hybrid

Download the Opportunity Drawing order form (PDF) >>

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community with experienced docents.

FREE ALL DAY!

May is Asian Pacific Heritage month. Celebrate with fun arts, crafts, and food for the whole family. Keep checking back for more information.

Generously sponsored by Target, these special Saturdays are filled with fun activities giving families unique ways to learn, play, and grow together.


2012 TARGET FAMILY FREE SATURDAY SCHEDULE
July 14: Faces + Places

OTHER FAMILY EVENTS
14th Annual Summer Festival on the Courtyard: Japanese American Olympics

Award-winning film by Frank Abe that provoked controversy nationwide for documenting the untold story of the largest organized resistance to the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans, and the suppression of that resistance by Japanese American leaders. Screening includes new featurette, “The JACL Apologizes.” Q&A with the filmmaker and DVD signing will follow the screening.

This moving documentary tells the story of the United State’s involvement in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Stylized re-enactments, archival photos and film, political cartoons, historic quotes, and presentations by Hawaiian scholars tell Hawaiian history through Hawaiian eyes.

Join a remarkable panel of novelists featuring New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet), Kristina McMorris (Bridge of Scarlet Leaves), Margaret Dilloway (How to Be an American Housewife), and Paula Yoo (Good Enough). Topics will include the influence of Asian American history on today’s literature, weaving true and personal accounts into fiction, and cultural education through storytelling.

Ikebana (“living flower”) is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Sogetsu Ikebana is a three dimensional artistic expression composed of flower and plant material arranged in a container. This workshop will introduce the student to the basic technique and style that are the foundation of many Ikebana arrangements. Instructor Mikiko Ideno will teach you how to arrange using lines and space. Flowers used in the workshop are yours to take home and are included in the lesson fee.

$30 members; $35 non-members, includes admission and supplies. RSVP early, 10 students max.

This documentary celebrates Japanese American culture and history in Hawaii. Told through an intimate and joyful portrait of Maui Taiko, descendants of plantation workers, and by elders who lived this history. Experience Maui Taiko’s dynamic performances on the giant drums, and travel with them on a heartfelt journey back to rural Japan to seek their ancestral roots. Q&A with the filmmaker will follow the screening.

The last decade of this past century has been witness to a revolution in the development and application of mathematical techniques to origami, the centuries-old Japanese art of paper-folding. The techniques used in mathematical origami design range from the abstruse to the highly approachable. In this talk, I will describe how geometric concepts led to the solution of a broad class of origami folding problems – specifically, the problem of efficiently folding a shape with an arbitrary number and arrangement of flaps, and along the way, enabled origami designs of mind-blowing complexity and realism, some of which you’ll see, too. As often happens in mathematics, theory originally developed for its own sake has led to some surprising practical applications. The algorithms and theorems of origami design have shed light on long-standing mathematical questions and have solved practical engineering problems. I will discuss examples of how origami has enabled safer airbags, Brobdingnagian space telescopes, and more.

Special: Robert Lang will lead an informal gallery talk after his lecture.

Robert J. Lang is recognized as one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. With a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech, he has, during the course of work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spectra Diode Laboratories, and JDS Uniphase, authored or co-authored over 80 papers and 45 patents in lasers and optoelectronics as well as authoring, co-authoring, or editing 12 books and a CD-ROM on origami. He is a full-time artist and consultant on origami and its applications to engineering problems but keeps his toes in the world of lasers, most recently as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics from 2007–2010. He received Caltech’s highest honor, the Distiguished Alumni Award, in 2009.