Martha Longenecker, founder of the Mingei International Museum, unveiled her newest project Feb. 27 at the La Jolla Library, speaking, “surfing” and explaining the new Web site launched the first day of this year, www.see-mingei.org.
“This world-encompassing presentation provides an opportunity for individuals to see the unsurpassed beauty of objects related to life and to be inspired to express their innate creativity,” she said.
Calling the site a new frontier, “a window to the creative world” for the global audience, Longenecker toured the museum online, explaining and detailing each picture. The open-ended Web site will initially present approximately 4,000 photographic images featuring selections from the museum’s permanent collection of more than 18,000 art objects. It represents 19 geographic areas of the world from the U. S. to Africa, Asia to the Middle East, South America to Oceania.
Longenecker has earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a master’s degree from Claremont Graduate University. In a career spanning more than 60 years, she has been a ceramic artist, professor emerita of San Diego State University and founder of the museum, has become an icon in the art world.
She founded the museum, which is dedicated to furthering the understanding of the “arts of the people,” in a modest space at the University Towne Centre shopping mall in 1978. Under her guidance, Mingei International has grown into a renowned facility in Balboa Park with a satellite in North County.
She is one of the few individuals who studied advanced pottery-making under two of Japan’s Living National Treasurers, the late Shoji Harmada and Tatsuzo Shimaoka. Longenecker has devoted her life to the mingei movement (“min” equals “people” and “gei” equals “art”), which Dr. Soetsu Yanagi founded in the 1920s.
Longenecker was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Emperor of Japan in 2003. She will receive an honorary doctorate from San Diego State University for her decades of service as a pioneering educator in the arts in June.
” Mera Kelley is a gerontologist and authentic happiness coaching program graduate. www.adventurousaging.com.
