Chiura Obata’s Glorious Struggle

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

African American History And Culture, Tony Cohn, Natural History, Air And Space, Society & Culture, Art19, Smithsonian, Science, Sidedoor, History Of The World, The Smithsonian, Pop Culture, Zoo, Dc, National Museum, Exhibit, History, National Zoo, American History, Exhibits, Postal Museum, Washington, Museum

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Chiura Obata painted “Moonlight Over Topaz, Utah,” he was a prisoner at the camp: one of 120,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated during World War II. The painting shows a dreamy moonlit desert, with just a few dark lines to hint at the barbed wire fences and guard towers that held him and his family captive. As a painter, Obata turned again and again to nature as his greatest teacher, and his greatest subject. Today, his work can be found in art collections and museums around the world, including the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. This time on Sidedoor, we learn from Chiura Obata about the power of art in tumultuous times.

Speakers:

Rihoko Ueno: Processing archivist at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art

Noriko Sanefuji: Museum specialist in the Division of Cultural and Community Life at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History @apacurator @amhistorymuseum

ShiPu Wang: Coats Endowed Chair in the Arts and Professor of Art History at The University of California Merced. Curator of the traveling exhibition, “Chiura Obata: An American Modern.” @curatingobata

Kimi Hill: Chiura Obata’s granddaughter and author of the book, “Topaz Moon.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.6	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:24.0	There's a painting that hung on the wall of Eleanor Roosevelt's bedroom until the day
0:28.1	she died.
0:29.6	It's a watercolor painted on silk.
0:32.2	To me, it has sort of a dreamlike quality.
0:36.0	It does, and I think just out of glance, you would think, like, this is just a very
0:40.8	pretty calming landscape.
0:43.8	But there's more to this painting, which is why it hung on the former First Ladies
0:48.1	Wall.
0:49.1	Rihoko Weno, archivist at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, describes it for
0:53.9	me.
0:54.9	This evening landscape, there's sort of a full moon on the top left corner of the painting.
1:03.0	The top edge of the painting is blue, and that sort of fades into a cream color.
1:10.4	And then you see the blue outline of the mountains in the distance, and then below that you see
1:16.7	the black outline of barracks and a guard tower and the fencing running along the perimeter
1:25.2	of the Topaz camp.
1:32.3	Topaz camp was one of 10 incarceration camps that held Japanese Americans during World
1:36.8	War II.
1:38.8	Over the course of nearly four years, the US government forced 120,000 people of Japanese
1:44.7	ancestry into these camps, most of them American citizens.
1:49.4	One was a man named Shiora Obata.
	...

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