With a very tight space of 1,400 square feet, we updated a 20-year old exhibit to tell the story Japanese Americans during World War II, the violation of their civil rights, and their removal to incarceration camps throughout the U.S. We centered the new exhibit around survivors’ resilience, resistance, and ultimate reclamation of power.

We were tasked with expanding the scope of stories while preserving most of the artifacts, props, media, and images from the old exhibit. Working with an advisory group, which included camp survivors and their children, we reorganized the content to clarify the socio-political context for  removal, pulled the voices of survivors to the surface, and clarified the exhibit themes from what had been a very crowded visual experience. 

With a 25 ft. ceiling, we expanded the exhibit walls upwards and used a visual element to conceal the remaining volume – a cloud of 1,000 origami cranes folded by the exhibit’s docents. Redesigned touchscreens give better visual access to videos of survivors’ storytelling and docents’ favorite photographs.