Trailblazing 20th century Japanese American female painters

“Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi and Miné Okubo” is an unprecedented exploration of three trailblazing Japanese American artists of the mid-20th century who, until now, have been excluded from the story of modernism in the United States. The exhibition asserts their place in American art and reveals a broader picture of the American experience by presenting their artworks and life stories in dialogue with each other for the first time.

The exhibition is on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building in Washington, D.C., from November 15, 2024, through August 17, 2025. The museum’s presentation is the second stop on a national tour, organized by the Japanese American National Museum with exhibition curator ShiPu Wang, Coats Family Chair in the Arts and professor of art history at the University of California, Merced. “Pictures of Belonging” is coordinated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum by Melissa Ho, curator of 20th-century art, with Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art.

“The Smithsonian American Art Museum plays a leadership role in telling richer and deeper stories about art in the United States, featuring new voices and presenting a more inclusive narrative of American art through acquisition campaigns, reimagined permanent collection galleries, new scholarship and special exhibitions,” Jane Carpenter-Rock, acting director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, said.

The exhibition highlights the paintings of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo, complemented by drawings, sketchbooks, archival material and video footage. The artworks span eight decades, revealing the range and depth of these three artists’ careers and connections that have not been explored previously. A visual timeline puts their life events in context with each other and with key moments in U.S. history. The prolific careers of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo are remarkable considering that they lived through the Exclusion Era (1882–1965), a period characterized by U.S. laws that restricted immigration, prevented Asians from becoming naturalized American citizens and contributed to the mass displacement and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo were the three most visible and critically acclaimed Japanese American women artists in the United States in the 1930s. During World War II, all three were forced from their homes in California. The federal government imprisoned Hibi and Okubo in incarceration camps, first in California and then in Utah; Hayakawa relocated to New Mexico. Yet all three remained committed to making art, their creative work a vital means of navigating their experiences and building bonds of community.

By tracing the artistic development of Hayakawa, Hibi and Okubo before, during and after World War II, the exhibition offers the first nuanced and in-depth view of how each developed a distinct painting style. Hayakawa, who died young at age 53, displayed a special affinity for painting people early on and was known for her sensitive, luminous portraits. Hibi, over time, evolved from painting landscapes and still lifes to creating symbolically freighted canvases activated by abstract marks of color. Okubo, best known for her 1946 graphic memoir of wartime removal and incarceration, Citizen 13660, operated within the mainstream of American social realism in the 1930s, but turned to bold color, simplified forms and whimsical images of children and animals in later years. Collectively, their art, produced during tumultuous decades in U.S. history, carry powerful stories of resilience, beauty and connection.

“‘Pictures of Belonging’ demonstrates that the artists’ experience of mass incarceration and relocation during WWII, while pivotal, did not define them,” Ho said. “These women continued to evolve and challenge themselves as artists throughout their lives.”

The exhibition includes works by Hibi and Okubo recently acquired for Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, part of a multi-year initiative to expand and enrich the representation of Asian American experiences, perspectives and artistic accomplishment in public displays and new scholarship.

Public Programs

To mark the opening of the exhibition Friday, November 15, Wang will conduct a gallery talk at 11:45 a.m. Art in the A.M., the museum’s program for children ages up to 5 years and their caregivers, will explore the exhibition Tuesday, December 10, at 10:30 a.m.; the program includes a hands-on art activity. Wang will present a virtual talk Wednesday, January 15, 2025, at 7 p.m. ET. An in-person and virtual panel discussion about uncovering and illuminating vulnerable histories related to Asian American artists and their communities is scheduled for Friday, March 14, 2025, at 6 p.m. with Wang; David Martin, curator at Cascadia Art Museum; and Patricia Wakida, artist and associate editor of the Densho Encyclopedia, and moderated by Ho. Registration is required for all programs.

Details and additional information about related programming will be available on the museum’s website as details are confirmed.

National Tour

The exhibition opened at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City. Following the presentation in Washington, D.C., it will travel to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, California; and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.