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In recent years, the museum world has highlighted the work of previously underrecognized artists, in part to reenergize collections and tell new stories, but more importantly as a means to question the rigidity of the canon. “Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo,” a new exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) on view through August 17, 2025, draws attention to three pioneering American women artists of Japanese descent. Despite often invisible barriers to success, such as race, gender, and painting style, and the very real challenges they faced, including displacement and mass incarceration during World War II, each woman persisted and sustained her own impressive creative voice.

Curated by ShiPu Wang, Coats Family Chair in the Arts, and professor at the University of California, Merced, and organized by the Japanese American National Museum, the exhibition is coordinated at SAAM by Melissa Ho, curator of twentieth-century art, with Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art. Of the exhibition’s importance,