(STOCKBRIDGE, Mass.) – Artist Setsuko Sato Winchester will discuss “The Yellow Bowl Project,” her new conceptual work exploring freedom, at the Norman Rockwell Museum on Saturday, March 25, at 5:30pm. Ms. Winchester will be joined and interviewed during the evening by her husband, Simon Winchester, a noted author and journalist whose cogent observations on historical events have appeared in many articles and nonfiction books.

During World War II, the U.S. government opened ten concentration camps to incarcerate 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who had been forcibly removed from the West Coast. In 2015, Ms. Winchester, a Japanese-American, began a journey to visit all the remains of these camps, most of them now in desolate ruins. The Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project, consisting of 120 ceramic tea bowls created by the artist and photographed in the camps and related iconic landscapes, focuses on this challenging aspect of American history.

“The intent of this project is to inform and educate,” notes Winchester. “[It] may throw light on a discomfiting part of American history – but I hope not to condemn or blame, but help gauge where we are in this ever-evolving experiment we call ‘America.'”

A reception will follow the program. The event, co-sponsored by Norman Rockwell Museum and Berkshire Magazine, is free for museum members or included with Museum admission; program only costs $10.

Setsuko Sato Winchester is a former NPR journalist and ceramicist. Photographs of her Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project are currently on exhibit at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, New York, through December 31, 2017.

 

 

About the Norman Rockwell Museum

The Norman Rockwell Museum is dedicated to education and art appreciation inspired by the legacy of Norman Rockwell. The museum holds the world’s largest and most significant collection of art and archival materials relating to Rockwell’s life and work, while also preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting a growing collection of art by other American illustrators throughout history. The museum engages diverse audiences through onsite and traveling exhibitions, as well as publications, arts and humanities programs, and comprehensive online resources.

The museum’s dedication to a deepened understanding of the art of illustration has led to the formation of the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies. The first of its kind in the nation, this research institute supports sustained scholarship and establishes the museum’s leadership in the vanguard of preservation and interpretation relating to this important aspect of American visual culture.

Located on 36 park-like acres in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Rockwell’s hometown for the last 25 years of his life, the Museum is open seven days a week, year-round; closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Museum hours from May through October are: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, open until 7 p.m. on Thursdays during the month of August; from November through April: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends and holidays. Rockwell’s studio is open May through October, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Museum admission is $18, $17 for seniors, $10 for students, $6 for children and teens 6 to 18, and free for Museum members and children 5 and under.