Works by a major Japanese-American artist — including images he created at the Topaz internment camp during World War II — will become part of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts' permanent collection

Three years ago, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts presented an exhibition of the work of Japanese-American artist Chiura Obata — a leading member of the California art scene of the 1930s, who also captured some stirring images of the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, where he was imprisoned for 8 months during World War II.

Since 2017, when museum officials were working to bring the touring exhibition to Utah, curators also were working to convince Obata’s estate to make UMFA a permanent home for some of his work. That effort paid off in December, when the museum announced it had aquired 35 of Obata’s work for its permanent collection.

Read more about the acquisition, and Obata’s connection to Utah, in my article for sltrib.com.

(I have a tangential connection to Obata, which once again shows we live in a small world. The artist and his family left Topaz in 1943, to live with Obata’s oldest son, Gyo, in St. Louis. Gyo was entering Washington University to study architecture. Sometime after the war, Gyo Obata and two of his classmates formed an architectural firm, Hellmuth Obata and Kassebaum — now known simply as HOK, and one of the most important architectural firms in the world. My late uncle, Jim Henrekin, was a protege of Gyo Obata, and worked his career at HOK, first in St. Louis and then in their San Francisco office.)