Hyperallergic's "The Best Art Shows Around the World in 2025" (Dec. 18, 2025)

 

"Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, November 15, 2024–August 17, 2025
Curated by ShiPu Wang

 

This exhibition focused on the work of three women artists whose lives were upended by the displacement and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Hayakawa, who fled to New Mexico, and Hibi and Okubo, who were sent to internment camps, were forced to abandon already thriving careers in the Bay Area. Okubo’s “Wind and Dust” (1943) is a literal and symbolic depiction of the harsh climate into which so many were thrown — one in which immigrants were suddenly recast as enemies within. So very timely. —Aruna D'Souza"