About the Masumi Hayashi Foundation
The Masumi Hayashi Foundation is dedicated to serving the artistic and educational legacy of Dr. Masumi Hayshi (1945-2006). The foundation cares for and maintains the physical collected works of Dr. Masumi Hayashi, including over 200 original panoramic photo collage, framed and unframed, as well as earlier works by the artist.
The Masumi Hayashi Foundation is responsible for exhibiting the artwork and licensing of reproduction rights.
The Foundation is responsible for maintaining Dr. Hayashi’s websites, masumihayashi.com and masumimuseum.com. First published in 1994, the MasumiHayashi.com website presents Hayashi’s works addressing Japanese-American Internment Camps during World War II. This site presents Dr. Hayashi’s artwork, as well as first-person interviews, and family album photographs from internment camp survivors, gathered by the artist.
The foundation also maintains the masumimuseum.com website, which Dr. Hayashi created (with Etsuko Nagasawa) to showcase her work in the following series:
- Sacred Architectures
- Japanese-American Internment Camps
- Japanese-Canadian Internment Camps
- Internee Survivor Portraits
- Post-Industrial Landscapes
- E.P.A. Superfund Sites
- Abandoned Prisons
- War and Military Sites
- Commissions
- City Works
Mission of the Masumi Hayashi Foundation
The Mission of the Foundation is to keep the work of Masumi Hayashi in the public eye, keeping the work available for exhibition, as well as available for print and magazine reproduction. The Foundation seeks to build relationships with cultural fine arts influencers like museum and gallery curators, writers and other artists, as well as art dealers, and publishers so that the continuing relevance of Hayashi’s work can be appreciated.
The Foundation has identified some projects to help increase exposure to Dr. Hayashi’s work.
Project: Catalog the Collected Works
The Masumi Hayashi Foundation has been working with M. Gentile Studios, to catalog the collected works, including panoramic photo collage and earlier works. M. Gentile Studios also provides important framing and conservation services for the body of Masumi Hayashi’s work.
A catalog of the existing works is being assembled. A catalog of works brought to market in 2018 will also be made available.
It is the goal of the Foundation to publish comprehensive catalogs of the work of Masumi Hayashi so that the breadth subject matter reflected in her work can be appreciated.
Project: Digitize the Collected Works
While many of the collected works have been photographed digitally by the artist, one primary goal of the Masumi Hayashi Foundation is to create a high-resolution digital archive file for each of the works that Masumi Hayashi created, so that the artwork might be preserved into the far future. Our goal here will be to re-shoot all the pieces in studio conditions, with care and handling to remove and re-assemble matting and frames.
Project: E.P.A. Superfund Sites pages
The foundation seeks to build out an expansion to the existing websites that shows the additional content created by Hayashi, reports culled together from EPA Documents that present aspects of the cleanup work done by the EPA, and how they have been effective at restoring usefulness and safety to the various sites. (These pages may be presented here on this masumihayashifoundation.org website.)
Project: Catalog Raisonne
It is the goal of the Masumi Hayashi Foundation to produce a catalog raisonne for the work of Dr. Masumi Hayashi, hopefully through a partnership with an established research institution…