On December 12th, 2019, a large crowd that included many students, professors, and staff from the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM) at Oberlin College gathered for Professor Sakakibara’s talk, showing the wide-ranging support Professor Sakakibara and her research has from people across campus.
Professor Sakakibara gave a talk about a collaborative project she is working on with the Ainu community, who are the indigenous people of northern Japan. She worked with Dr. Kevin Greenwood, the Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, to put on an exhibition of a series of photographs of Ainu people by Arnold Genthe in 2018. The photographs are an ethnographic collection from Genthe’s visit to Hokkaido in Japan and reveal a typical Western attitude of aboriginal people but, Sakakibara argues, are an important resource to tell the untold stories of people and place.
Professor Sakakibara brought the photographs from the AMAM’s collection back home to Hokkaido to talk to the Ainu community, with whom the photographs had never been shared with, and explained the ambitions for the exhibition. Even though the photos were taken more than 100 years ago, residents were thrilled to see them and helped Professor Sakakibara identify landmarks, surroundings, and the people photographed. Professor Sakakibara emphasized how warmly and kindly the Ainu people embraced her.
Maki Sekina, an Ainu educator and artist Professor Sakakibara talked to, proposed to make the AMAM exhibition into a traveling exhibition so that the photographs could come back to Hokkaido. Professor Sakakibara and the AMAM agreed, and the exhibition will travel to Nibutani Ainu Museum and the National Ainu Museum in Japan.
Their goals for their collaboration are as follows:
- Better situate the photos and other materials associated with Genthe in the community by recovering detailed contextual information about the materials
- Develop community-wide consensus on the proper future uses of photographs
- Restore community access to the photos
Professor Sakakibara hopes that this collaborative project can show how institutions and people can work together in a better, more reciprocal, way.
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The research presentation by Professor Chie Sakakibara took place on Thursday, December 12th from 12:15 to 1:00pm in Severance 108.
