Beauty in Enormous Bleakness is supported by: A Faculty Collaboration Grant from The Divided City: An Urban Humanities Initiative (The Mellon Foundation & WUSTL’s Center for Humanities); the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at WUSTL; and the John B. Olin Library, Special Collections Department at WUSTL. 

Special thanks to Jessi Cerutti (Exhibitions Manager), Ian Lanius (Exhibitions Preparator), and Miranda Rectenwald (Curator of Local History) from WUSTL’s John B. Olin Library; Gabriela Naomi Caden Senno (descendant, WUSTL ‘22), Toni Aguilar-Rosenthal (WUSTL ‘21), Andreea Coscai, Makio Yamamoto (WUSTL ‘20), and Danielle Ridolfi (WUSTL ‘23) (BIEB Project & Design Assistants). 

Project collaborators would also like to acknowledge their ongoing consultation with members of the Japanese American community—including descendents of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII—in St. Louis. These individuals include Rod Henmi (son of Richard Henmi), Kiku Obata (daughter of Gyo Obata), and Robin Hattori (descendant, WUSTL Occupational Therapy). This project has been collaborative to the fullest extent, involving various dialogues with scholars, practitioners, archivists, historians, and architects working within a range of fields.