Moving Walls: Heart Mountain Barracks in the Big Horn Basin

September 29, 2020 – January 16, 2021

South Two Gallery

This year marks 75 years since the closure of concentration camps in the United States built by the U.S. government to incarcerate Japanese Americans during WWII. This exhibition features photographs by photographer Stan Honda that explore barracks from Heart Mountain, the concentration camp in Wyoming, both before and after its closure in 1945.

After the closure, some of the barracks were purchased by homesteaders and many are still inhabited today, some as unrecognizable homes, shop spaces, and barns. Moving Walls brings together two tales of struggle and resilience: the confinement of a people based simply on race, and the settling of the American West by modern pioneers who chose to build new lives on the frontier. Honda’s work is paired with a film and book project by filmmaker and writer Sharon Yamato, Moving Walls: The Barracks of America’s Concentration Camps.

The Art Museum in partnership with UW American Studies Program will host a virtual symposium featuring a Thursday night Speaker Series in October, along with creative activations in partnership with Tsuru for Solidarity, a Family Saturday Workshop, and Lunch Hour Conversation with Curators.

 

Related Programs:

Conversations Beyond the Walls: A Virtual Symposium

October 1-29, Free, Registration Required

Learn More 

• Moving Walls: Past and Present, Part of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research “Think and Drink” Series, October 1, 5:30 - 7 p.m.

• Family Saturday Workshop: Tsuru Art Activation, October 3, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., in person and virtual 

• Lunch Hour Conversations with Curators: Moving Walls, featuring Stan Honda and Andrea Graham, October 7, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

• Heart Mountain Barracks Revisited, October 8, 7-8:30 p.m.

• Moving Walls: Film Screening and Discussion, October 15, 7-8:30 p.m.

• No-No Boy: A Multimedia Presentation by Julian Saporiti, October 22, 7-8:30 p.m.

• Storytelling for a Better World with Bacon Sakatani, former Heart Mountain incarceree, October 29, 7-8:30 p.m.

Funded through the generosity of the UW Board of Trustee’s Strategic Projects Funds and the Wyoming Arts Council through the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming State Legislature.

Images:

Stan Honda (American), Original 20’ x 120’ barrack near Cody, Wyoming, 2017, photography, 38 x 28 x 1 inches, courtesy of Heart Mountain Interpretive Center

Stan Honda (American), Takashi Hoshizaki in front of a barrack, 2017, photography, 38 x 28 x 1 inches, courtesy of Heart Mountain Interpretive Center

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