The Museum is pleased to present a discussion that helps us appreciate why Chiura Obata was such an influential and beloved artist, and why his artwork is still relevant today. This gallery presentation will feature ShiPu Wang, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at UC Merced, curator of this exhibition and a UCSB alumnus, Kim Yasuda, Professor of Art at UCSB, will also discuss how Obata’s work can still resonate with contemporary audiences, especially for those working in the visual arts, as well as those who are immigrants or children of immigrants.

The University of California Press is publishing the exhibition catalogue that showcases more than 100 beautiful images and a selection of Obata’s writings, as well as a rare 1965 interview with the artist. The scholarly essays in the catalogue illuminate the intense and productive cross-cultural negotiations that Obata’s life and work exemplify, in the context of both American modernism and the early twentieth-century U.S. racio-ethnic relations—a still-understudied area in American art historical scholarship.  

The catalogue will be available for purchase at the museum [https://secure.lsit.ucsb.edu/artm/d7-2/exhibitions/catalogs] and through the UC Press: Chiura Obata An American Modern Catalogue. 

This faculty panel is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara.