Sacramento, California
crockerart.org
through September 29
The Crocker Art Museum is the latest stop for “Chiura Obata: An American Modern.” It is the first touring retrospective devoted to this Japanese-American artist (1885–1975), who is represented by more than 150 watercolors, paintings, prints, and screens. These range from intimate ikebana studies to grand landscapes of the American West; many have never been on public display.
Born in Japan, Obata emigrated to the U.S. in 1903 and became an influential professor at the University of California, Berkeley, for 22 years — a tenure interrupted by his internment in 1942–43 simply because he was Japanese.
This project was organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where it premiered in 2018. Its final stop will be the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (November 27, 2019–May 25, 2020).
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