Michi Itami (born 1938) is a Japanese-American visual artist. Her work includes printmaking, painting, ceramics and digital art and has been exhibited internationally. She has had solo exhibitions at A.I.R. Gallery, New York; 2221 Gallery in New Delhi, India; Shinsegae Gallery in Seoul, Korea; Beni Gallery in Kyoto, Japan, among others. In 2004 Itami was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Woman's Caucus on Art. She taught at the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

and at

California State University, Hayward California State University, East Bay (Cal State East Bay, CSU East Bay, or CSUEB) is a public university in Hayward, California. The university is part of the 23-campus California State University system and offers 136 undergraduate and 60 post ...

, and is Professor Emerita at

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

where she taught for over 20 years. Itami received a BA in English Literature from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1959; later studied at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York where she performed graduate work from 1959 to 1962 in Japanese and English literature, later receiving a MA degree in 1971 from the University of California Berkeley. She was a member of ''Godzilla'', an Asian American arts advocacy group.

Early life

Itami and her family were incarcerated at the

Manzanar War Relocation Center Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from March 1942 to November 1945. Although it had over 10,000 inmates at its peak, it was one o ...

during World War II following the signing of

Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...

. Her father, Akira Itami, was the model for a character in

Toyoko Yamasaki was a Japanese novelist. A native of Osaka, Yamasaki worked as a journalist for the Mainichi Shimbun from 1945 to 1959 after graduating from Kyoto Women's University in Japanese literature. She published her first story, ''Noren'' (1957), a st ...

's 1983 novel titled "Futatsu no Sokoku", Two Motherlands.

Awards, honors

Itami has received a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

grant in printmaking, a

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

Grant, and a Printmaking Fellowship in Asilah, Morocco.

Collections

Itami's work is included in those at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

San Francisco Legion of Honor Museum The Legion of Honor, formally known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which als ...

, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan,

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

and the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

References

1938 births Living people American women artists American artists of Japanese descent Japanese-American internees 20th-century American women 21st-century American women {{US-painter-1930s-stub