Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani Retrospective Opens 2/19/26 at Spencer Museum in Lawrence, KS

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, untitled (cat with blue peony), circa 2001

(Used with Permission)

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.

For more information, see the Spencer Museum website.