How objects speak
3. American Families
Date: 2001
Created by Momo Nagano
Medium: linen and poly-cotton
Credit line: Gift of Momo Nagano
Object ID: 2001.82.1
Momo Nagano (b. 1925) is a Nisei artist and teacher who grew up in a Los Angeles neighborhood referred to as 30th Street. She created this weaving to bear testimony to those denied their constitutional rights as American citizens when they were forcibly removed from the neighborhood during World War II. While the project memorializes specific families, it is dedicated to all of the communities within the Western Defense Command that were similarly dislocated as a consequence of wartime hysteria and racism.