UC Berkeley California Studies Dinner Seminar, September 11, 2019: Kimi Kodani Hill, “Chiura Obata, an American Modern”.

The late Chiura Obata was a prominent California artist and Professor of Art at UC Berkeley. A Japanese immigrant, he was particularly well known for his paintings of the Sierra Nevada and of the Topaz, Utah camp at which he was incarcerated during World War II. Currently he is the subject of a major retrospective exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. According to San Francisco Chronicle art critic Charles Desmarais, he left “a body of work exciting and fresh even today.” Obama’s granddaughter, artist and writer Kimi Kodani Hill, is the family historian and the author of Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment.

The seminar meets on Wednesday, September 11, 7-9:15 pm at the UCB Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, 2521 Channing Way (just east of Telegraph Ave.).

Free admission and dinner.

Contact Christina McKay at christina.mckay@berkeley.edu with questions.