Nikkei Artist Collectives in Interwar California
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15010455 |
|---|---|
| Authors | ShiPu Wang (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 58-89 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Art (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1073-9300 • E-ISSN: 1549-6503 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/733263 |
| OpenAlex | W4405171416 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
This essay surveys the rich but under-studied history of artists of Japanese descent (Nikkei) who fostered self-representation, visibility, and a sense of belonging through organizing transcultural collectives and group exhibitions in interwar California. The extent of Nikkei artists’ contributions to American modernism in the Exclusion era (1885–1965), characterized by a series of anti-immigration and anti-Asian laws, may surprise contemporary readers, as many of these names have been obscured and their artworks lost, in part because of wartime displacement and incarceration. Historical records show, however, 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 presented experiences and perspectives that were both shared and heterogenous. 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
Archaeology · Art · Art history · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Music History and Culture
| Highly cited | No |
|---|