Street Nihonga

The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani

February 19, 2026–June 28, 2026

Sam & Connie Perkins Central Court, The Estelle S. & Robert A. Long Ellis Foundation Gallery, Dolph Simons Family Gallery

Drawing of a black-and-white cat peering at an orange-and-black fish swimming in a bowl surrounded by flowers — Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, *untitled (cat with blue peony)*, circa 2001

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 co-curated by KU Associate Professor of Japanese Art Maki Kaneko and Spencer Curator of Global Contemporary & Asian Art Kris Ercums.

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani

untitled (“Mt. Fuji” and flames in homage to Hayami Gyoshū)

after 2001

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani

untitled (Tule Lake collage)

2002

Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani

untitled (World Trade Center and Kannon)

2005

Drawing of a tri-colored cat with its tail wrapped around smaller, black-and-white cat with fish and leaves nearby

Black-and-white photograph of a young Asian man looking at a hanging scroll depicting a hawk on a pine tree

Drawing of buildings facing a cemetery in a field; a chain-link fence separates this area from a large mountain with a cross at the peak that partially covers a red sun

Collage with a drawing of a deity flanked by flames standing above a domed building engulfed in swirling flames and smoke; a variety of photographs are pasted in the top right

Drawing of a domed building with a cross on top enveloped in swirling red and yellow flames and black smoke

Drawing of a sleeping cat surrounded by white cloud-like shapes

Collage with a drawing of a cat looking toward a fishbowl surrounded by photographs, including several of an Asian man wearing a hat with different people

A black card holder with a string displaying a photograph of an Asian man wearing a red hat with “June 15” below it

Drawing of a white cat with black stripes crawling next to a bamboo stalk with leaves

Drawing on a wooden panel of a hawk on a tree with red blossoms and a green bamboo stalk in the lower right corner

Collage with photographs of a white woman and Asian man pasted on the top left corner of a drawing of an office building engulfed in fire and smoke

Collage featuring a photograph of two men standing in front of a painting of a hawk next to images of a vase and older men with the text “The Cats of Mirikitani”

Collage with a large drawing of a turtle at the center, surrounded by photographs of everyday people and world leaders

Supporters

This exhibition and related programs are supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Linda Bailey Exhibition and Programming Fund, the Douglas County Community Foundation, the University of Kansas Office of Research, University of Kansas Student Senate, the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, George and Hillary Hirose, Judy Paley, the International Artist in Residence Program Fund, the Marilyn J. Stokstad Spencer Museum Publications Fund, Arts Research Integration, and Friends of the Art Museum.