Detail: Miné Okubo: Portraits, the gallery’s first solo exhibition featuring work by one of the most influential Japanese-American artists of the 20th Century. From January 9 through March 1, 2025, works by Okubo will be on public display, some for the first time, including eleven portraits completed in the late 1940s.

Born in Riverside, California, in 1912, Miné Okubo achieved early success as an artist and continued to be extraordinarily prolific throughout her life until her death in 2001. She is most renown for Citizen 13660, a groundbreaking memoir that combines visual art and narrative to record her experience living in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. From 1942 to 1944, Okubo was detained at the Tanforan Relocation Center in San Bruno, California, and at the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. While in these camps, she created over 2,000 drawings using charcoal, watercolor, pen, and ink. During this time she taught art to others in the incarcerated population, alongside Chiura Obata and other notable artists. Published in 1946, Citizen 13660 includes nearly 200 illustrations documenting daily life in the camps. It received the American Book Award in 1984.

After her release from the Topaz Camp in 1944, Okubo relocated to New York City, where she went on to have a successful career as a commercial illustrator for prestigious publications while continuing her painting practice. Portraits—especially of women and children—remained a central focus of her work. In “Personal Statement” she wrote “From the beginning, my work has been rooted in a concern for the humanities.”

The eleven portraits featured in this exhibition were created in the late 1940s, just a few years after Okubo’s release from the camps. These bold, powerful works share stylistic connections with her earlier charcoal drawings from the internment period, which are also displayed in the gallery. While her camp drawings often convey the despair and trauma of the incarcerated, the later portraits—rendered in colorful pastel—capture energy, strength, and compassion. The anonymous figures exude vitality and humanity, celebrating everyday life and signal an early transition to Okubo’s iconic, color-rich style.