Barbara Johns

Barbara Johns , PhD, is an art historian and curator, whose work for the past twenty years has focused on Issei artists in Seattle. She is the former chief curator of the Tacoma Art Museum and began her museum career at the Seattle Art Museum, where she was introduced to the artists’ early work. She also managed the Northwest Asian American Artists Project for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Since working independently she has curated exhibitions of the Issei artists’ work at the Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Northwest Art, Washington State History Museum (national tour), and the Wing Luke Museum. She is the author of Paul Horiuchi East and West, Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita, The Hope of Another Spring: Takuichi Fujii, Artist and Wartime Witness, Kenjiro Nomura: An Issei Artist’s Journey, and the forthcoming Side by Side: Seattle’s Nihonmachi by Nomura, Tokita, and Fujii (publication 2027).