JACCC Awarded Grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC) has been awarded $50,000 from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for a Spring 2023 Curatorial Research Fellowship. This award will support the development of the forthcoming, Fall 2025 transdisciplinary exhibition, Hirokazu Kosaka: Art and Asymmetry, which will contextualize the evolution of the artmaking of JACCC’s Master Artist in Residence.

Guest curator, Julie Lazar, will investigate Kosaka’s solo visual, sound, landscape, and body
experiments of the early 1970s to his current large-scale, collaborative, and socially involved
projects that seamlessly incorporate contemporary art concepts with ideas and traditions of
calligraphy, Zen archery, Enso painting, Noh drama, Bunraku puppetry, and Kabuki theater as
well as Shingon Buddhism. Lazar remarked on the newly awarded fellowship, "Sometimes a
web of mutual respect and generosity is made visibly public. It is an honor to be collaborating
once again with Hirokazu Kosaka and the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.”

JACCC’s project was featured in The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ larger
announcement of Spring 2023 grant awards, totaling more than $4 million to 49 arts
organizations and museums. “Hirokazu Kosaka’s practice spans early experiments in sound,
performance and environmental art to current-day collaborative, cross-genre, socially engaged
projects,” said Rachel Bers, Program Director of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,
“The Foundation is pleased to support Julie Lazar’s research into the diverse critical influences
on Kosaka’s artistic methods, his spiritual development, and his study of centuries-old traditions
that together have produced a unique body of work and approach to artmaking.”

"We are delighted to receive this generous support for this undertaking focusing on Hirokazu
Kosaka’s art and life,” said Patricia Wyatt, JACCC President and CEO. "Hirokazu was honored
with the President’s Award at our June 2023 Anniversary Dinner. An in-depth presentation of his
visual art and performance is well-deserved and will be of great interest to all those whom he
has inspired over his four decades at JACCC and in Little Tokyo."

In accordance with Andy Warhol’s will, the mission of The Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts is the advancement of the visual arts. The foundation manages a dynamic
grants program while also preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible
licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonné
projects. To date, the foundation has given $280 million in cash grants to over 1,000 arts
organizations in 49 states and abroad and has donated 52,786 works of art to 322
institutions worldwide. For more information on other projects included in the grant
announcement, visit warholfoundation.org.

Julie Lazar is an independent curator based in Northern California who served as a founding
Curator and Director of Experimental Programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles from 1982-2000.

Founded in 1972, the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC) is one of the largest ethnic arts and cultural centers of its kind in the United States. The Japanese American Cultural & Community Center weaves Japanese and Japanese American arts and culture into the fabric of our communities. JACCC remains firmly rooted in Little Tokyo, providing a vital place to build connections between people and cultures, locally and internationally. Through inclusive programs and authentic experiences, we continue our living traditions and nurture the next generation of innovative artists, culture-bearers, and thinkers.

Contact

Carolina Roque, Manager of Development & Marketing

croque@jaccc.org