Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date (exhibition)

Retrospective exhibition featuring the work of Issei painter Hideo Date at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) that opened in 2001. Curated by Karin Higa, Living in Color draws on works Date donated to JANM as well as works held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum from the 1930s to the 1980s. An established artist by the 1930s, Date was sent to Santa Anita and Heart Mountain during the war, where he taught art and formed an Art Students League at the latter. Best known for his watercolor and gouache painting before the war, he turned to pencil drawings while incarcerated due in part to the difficulty of obtaining painting materials while in camp. The exhibition includes several of these drawings. Unlike artists such as Henry Sugimoto or Estelle Ishigo , Date's wartime drawings do not depict scenes from the concentration camps, most being of cats. An illustrated catalog with a biographical essay by Higa was published by Heyday Books, funded in part by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

Authored by Brian Niiya , Densho

For More Information

Higa, Karin. Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date . Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2001.

Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date . Past Exhibitions, Japanese American National Museum website. http://www.janm.org/exhibits/date/ .

Last updated Feb. 5, 2018, 6:20 p.m..