The Petrie Institute of Western American Art, part of the Denver Art Museum, is holding its 19th annual symposium this January. Titled Art as Agency: Creating Beauty at Amache and Beyond, the 2025 symposium is inspired by the Denver Art Museum exhibition The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama,which explores the career of 20th-century Japanese American artist Tokio Ueyama.
Tokio Ueyama (1889-1954), The Evacuee, 1942, oil on canvas, 24 x 30¼ in. Courtesy Japanese American National Museum: Gift of Kayoko Tsukada, 92.20.3. © Estate of Tokio Ueyama.
The exhibition also delves into the ways in which painting, screen printing and other art forms helped reassert humanity, creativity and resilience at American internment camps including the Granada Relocation Center in southeast Colorado (now the Amache National Historic Site), one of 10 incarceration sites established by the War Relocation Authority during World War II that wrongly imprisoned Japanese Americans following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Tokio Ueyama (1889-1954), Desert Brush, 1945, oil on canvas, 15¾ x 19 in. Courtesy Japanese American National Museum: Gift of Kayoko Tsukada, 92.20.5. © Estate of Tokio Ueyama.
“Since his death in 1954, Tokio Ueyama’s work has been largely forgotten,” says JR Henneman, director and curator of the Petrie Institute. “The exhibition The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama seeks to raise awareness of this cosmopolitan artist’s exceptional art and fascinating life. The work of Japanese American artists unjustly incarcerated in American concentration camps during World War II, including Ueyama, merit deeper examination and appreciation. The exhibition and the upcoming symposium seek to remember these histories and artists and celebrate how the Western landscape and experience has served as artistic inspiration even during times of hardship and duress.”
Tokio Ueyama (1889-1954), Self Portrait, 1943, oil on canvas, 18 x 16 in. Bunkado, Inc. © Estate of Tokio Ueyama. Photo courtesy Joshua White. Image courtesy Bunkado, Inc.
Slated for Friday, January 24, the symposium will include five speakers—ShiPu Wang, Jonathan Thumas, Bonnie Clark, Patricia Limerick and Melissa Geisler Trafton—with time allotted for attendees to ask questions as well. Art as Agency: Creating Beauty at Amache and Beyond takes place online and in the Denver Art Museum’s Sharp Auditorium from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Doors open at 9 a.m. The Life and Art of Tokio Ueyama will remain on view in the museum’s Martin Building through June 1. —
Tokio Ueyama (1889-1954), Untitled (barracks with basketball hoop), 1944, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Courtesy Japanese American National Museum: Gift of Kayoko Tsukada, 92.20.7. © Estate of Tokio Ueyama.
Art as Agency: Creating Beauty at Amache and Beyond
January 24, 2025, 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.Denver Art Museum
100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO
(720) 865-5000 www.denverartmuseum.org
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