Chiura Obata, Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley,1927/1928, color woodcut on paper, 15 3/4 x 11 in., printed by Tadeo Takamigawa, Tokyo, private collection, San Franciso

Project Description:

"AsianAmericanArt: California Confluences and Crosscurrents" is the most comprehensive study and interpretation ever undertaken of the history of visual art production by individuals of Asian ancestry (Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean and South Asian) in the United States from the mid-19th century to 1965. Already fully collaborative in structure, the project involves scholars from fields including American and Asian histories and art histories, Ethnic Studies, and Women's Studies.

Over the last decade, a research team involving specialists from institutions including the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, San Francisco State University, University of California at Los Angeles, and Stanford University, aided by more than fifty student interns, formed the foundation for this project. Research results now fill more than twenty linear feet of files, comprising the most comprehensive and largest resource about Asian-American art available anywhere. Using this archival research, the project has now move into an "Interpretive Phase" based at Stanford University. A major publication resulting from this research will be available in fall 2007. A touring exhibition jointly organized by Stanford University, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open in 2007 as well.

This project will help transform conceptions of American art and the lives of Asian Americans, and will help shift discussion of American art history toward the West Coast. It will also contribute new transnational perspectives on Asian art history, and will provide a multitude of new information to feed future exhibitions and related scholarly studies.

• Preparation of manuscript for 400 page book, to be submitted to Stanford University Press, fall 2005.
• Commencement of acquisition of reproduction permissions for approximately 300 images, and acquisition of reproduction quality artwork, to be completed fall 2005.
• Coordination of plans for major international touring exhibition scheduled to open summer 2007.

Core personnel:

• Gordon H. Chang (Professor of History, Stanford)
• Mark Johnson ( Professor of Art, San Francisco State University)
• Sharon Spain (Project Manager)

Contributors and Advisors:

• Daniell Cornell (Associate Curator of American Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
• Karin Higa (Senior Curator of Art, Japanese American National Museum)
• Paul Karlstrom (Retired, West Coast Regional Director of the Archives of American Art)
• Margo Machida (Assistant Professor of Art, Art History and Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut)
• Valerie Matsumoto (Associate Professor of History, UCLA)
• Dennis Reed (Dean of Fine Arts, Los Angeles Valley College)
• Michael Sullivan (Fellow Emeritus of St. Catherine's College, Oxford University; Professor Emeritus, Stanford University)
• Tom Wolf (Professor of Art History, Bard College)
• Kao Mayching (Professor, The Open University of Hong Kong)

Undergraduate Assistants:

• Melissa Singson
• Cynthia Lee
• Nico Machida