EXHIBITION
August 23 – December 10, 2026
The Art Gallery, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), Art Building
Born in Sacramento, California, in 1920 and raised in Hiroshima, Japan, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani (1920–2012) lived a life shaped by displacement, resilience, collaboration, and creativity across borders. Trained in Nihonga (“Japanese-style” painting) in prewar Japan, he returned to the United States in 1940 and endured wartime incarceration at Tule Lake, the loss of family and friends in Hiroshima to the atomic bombing, and decades of statelessness and homelessness in postwar New York City. His art—spanning painting, drawing, collage, and mixed media—became both a survival strategy and a way to transform memories of his transpacific journey and Japanese American experiences into shared testimony.
Street Nihonga sheds light on Mirikitani’s creative practice, intertwining artmaking, life narration, and street activism through the largest assembly of his works to date. The exhibition unfolds through six thematic sections: Sidewalk Stories, Street Nihonga, Tule Lake Memory-Scape, Multiple Ground Zeros, Affinities and Connections, and Entangled Memories. Traveling across Sacramento, Hiroshima, Tule Lake, and New York—and fusing Japanese painting aesthetics with street materials in collaboration with passersby and neighbors—Mirikitani’s art invites us to engage with his extraordinary life stories beyond national divides, emphasizing artmaking’s power as a means of survival, political expression, and cross-cultural dialogue.
Street Nihonga is organized by the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, and co-curated by University of Kansas Associate Professor of Japanese Art Maki Kaneko and Spencer Museum Curator of Global Contemporary & Asian Art Kris Imants Ercums. It is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC. Exhibition venues include Spencer Museum of Art, The Art Gallery at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; Mitaka City Gallery of Art, Mitaka, Japan (January 30 to March 22, 2027); and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (dates TBA).
There is an accompanying virtual exhibition with additional research and resources available in English and Japanese.
EVENTS
Sunday, Aug. 23, 2:00-4:00 PM: Opening Reception, Gallery Talk with Curators
UHM, Art Building, The Art Gallery
To mark the opening of Street Nihonga, curators Dr. Maki Kaneko and Dr. Kris Imants Ercums will speak about the exhibition, its featured artist, and their curatorial process to produce this show.
Sunday, Sept. 13, 12:00-2:00 PM: Screening with Director: The Cats of Mirikitani (2006)
UHM, Art Building, Auditorium, Room 132
Free public screening of The Cats of Mirikitani, the award-winning documentary film on the life and art of Jimmy Mirikitani. Director Linda Hattendorf will be present to introduce the film, talk story, and answer questions about her film and her friendship with Mirikitani.
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, 1:00-2:30 PM: “Art and Incarceration,” Lecture and Roundtable Discussion
UHM, Art Building, Room 101
Join this free public lecture and round-table discussion with Professors John Szostak (UHM), Kelli Y. Nakamura (Kapi'olani Community College), Kyle Kajihiro (UHM), and Nate Gyotoku, President & Executive Director of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i, on Japanese-American art making and cultural practice under incarceration during WWII.
Supporters
This exhibition is supported by the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Friends of the Spencer Museum of Art, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Linda Inman Bailey Exhibition Fund, and George and Hillary Hirose, and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC. In Honolulu, funding was provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Bloomswell Foundation, the UHM Japan Studies Endowment, and the UHM Department of Art and Art History. Special thanks also goes to the UHM Center for Japanese Studies, University of Hawai‘i Foundation, and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i in Honolulu.
THE ART GALLERY is located at 2535 McCarthy Mall, Rm 141, Honolulu, HI 96822.
Gallery hours and admission
Tuesday – Friday & Sunday 12 – 4 p.m.
Closed Saturdays, Mondays, spring break (March 17-22), and state holidays.
Free admission. Donations are appreciated.
Parking fees may apply during weekdays. Parking is free on Sundays
For more information please contact Sheika Alghezawi at 808.956.8364 and gallery@hawaii.edu