Art, Activism, Access: 40 Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA February 28, 2010 to June 13, 2010 The controversial firing of Professor Angela Davis in 1969, the tent city erected in support of South African divestment in the 1980s, the Chicano Studies hunger strike of 1993—for forty years UCLA has played a key role in our nation’s ongoing struggle with diversity, access, and inclusion. In the late 1960s amidst a nation divided, UCLA faculty, students, staff, and the community urged the administration to institute Ethnic Studies on campus. In 1969 Chancellor Charles E. Young established four centers: the American Indian Studies Center, Asian American Studies Center, Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the Chicano Studies Research Center. Art, Activism, Access: 40 Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA showcases the efforts and archives of these influential centers, exploring their roles in voicing the most significant issues of underrepresented communities in the fabric of American life. This lively display of murals, graphic art, films, ephemera, and photographs captures key moments in a remarkable history, offering a compelling review of the first forty years of ethnic studies at UCLA. Forty Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA Art, Activism, Access: 40 Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA has been organized by the Fowler Museum, the Institute of American Cultures, and the Ethnic Studies Research Centers. Generous funding has been provided by the Office of the Chancellor; Office for Faculty Diversity; Office of Vice Chancellor for Graduate Studies, Graduate Division; and Institute of American Cultures. News Release Link News Release PDF     Fowler in Focus: Courtly and Urban Batik from Java May 23, 2010 to September 5, 2010 Drawn from the Fowler Museum’s extensive holdings of Indonesian textiles, the refined batiks made in Java’s royal courts or urban workshops stand in contrast to the rustic rural batiks of Kerek. The pieces range from an impressively large skirt cloth for a Javanese sultan to a slim and elegant silk scarf regarded as suitable for an itinerant entertainer or other women of questionable repute. The cosmopolitan nature of Java’s north coast trading ports is evidenced by cloths intended for such diverse purposes as Islamic banners for the Sumatran market or alter cloths for the Chinese community residing in Java. All testify to the remarkable free-form artistry that is the halmark of fine hand-waxed batik. This exhibition has been developed as a companion to a major exhibition about cloth and the cycle of life in Kerek, Java (on view August 1–November 30, 2010).     Document: Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles June 6, 2010 to August 22, 2010 Four documentary photographers—Farhad Parsa, Arash Saedinia, Parisa Taghizadeh, and Ramin Talaei—focus their lenses on second-generation Iranian Americans of Los Angeles over a four-month period, October 2009–January 2010. The results will be on display in a thoughtful exhibition that considers the everyday lives of the subjects, as well as the photographers’ experiences of the process of documentation and how it informed their understandings of their own hyphenated Iranian identities.     Korean Funerary Figures: Companions for the Journey to the Other World August 15, 2010 to November 28, 2010 Koreans have a tradition of creating charming and festively painted wooden dolls. But rather than being placed in a toy box, these joyful figurines of clowns, tigers and acrobats adorn coffins. See seventy-four Korean funeral dolls, known as kkoktu— most carved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—and learn about their rich cultural and spiritual meaning. Their costumes and poses reflect the realities of rural Korean village life during a period for which few written records remain. More importantly, the kkoktu are a window on a timeless, characteristically Korean attitude towards death. Though the kkoktus’ gaiety seems incongruous with mourning, they express a culture’s deep desire that the dead enter the next world surrounded by joy— and its appreciation of the fleeting nature of all experience. The exhibition was organized in association with The Korea Society.