California Collectives: Finding Nikkei in Interwar American Art

May 12, 2026 / 17:30~19:00

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University

In person only / No prior registration required

Prof. ShiPu Wang discusses the rich but under-studied history of Nikkei artists who fostered self-representation, visibility, and a sense of belonging through organizing transcultural collectives and group exhibitions in interwar California. This period, falling within the Exclusion era (1885–1965), was characterized by anti-immigration and anti-Asian laws in the United States. Yet historical records show that Nikkei artists not only were active participants in landmark exhibitions but also initiated their own diverse displays that incorporated non-Japanese colleagues’ work and perspectives. Through these activities, Nikkei artists set the means and terms by which their art and, by extension, their identities and narratives were represented and received against a historical backdrop of xenophobia and exclusion.

Dr. ShiPu Wang’s scholarship has focused on recovering pre-WWII American art and history of artists of Japanese and Asian descent. The winner of the 2018 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Book Prize for The Other American Moderns: Matsura, Ishigaki, Noda, Hayakawa, Wang has also curated two major exhibitions: Chiura Obata: An American Modern (toured internationally in 2018–2020), and Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo for the Japanese American National Museum, where the exhibition will conclude its five-museum national tour in 2027. https://sites.ucmerced.edu/spwang

This talk is organized by Angela Yiu (Professor, Sophia University).

Photo: Group photo of the East West Art Society, San Francisco, California. Courtesy of the San Francisco Art Institute Archives.