New Collections: Hisako Hibi and Matsusaburo “George” Hibi Papers

This entry is part of an ongoing series highlighting new collections. The Archives of American Art collects primary source materials—original letters, writings, preliminary sketches, scrapbooks, photographs, financial records, and the like—that have significant research value for the study of art in the United States. The following essay was originally published in the Spring 2023 issue (vol. 62, no. 1) of the Archives of American Art Journal. More information about the journal can be found at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/aaa/current. 

The papers of painters Hisako and Matsusaburo “George” Hibi were donated to the Archives by Ibuki Hibi Lee, the couple’s daughter. This cache of sketches, correspondence, clippings, photography, personal writings, and more document in illuminating detail the intertwined lives and careers of these influential Japanese-American artists. Art historian ShiPu Wang helped guide the collection to the Archives, as he did with the Chiura Obata Papers, donated in 2018 by the artist’s granddaughters Mia Kodani Brill and Kimi Kodani Hill.

The Hibi and Obata collections intersect in several places. The Hibis’ marriage license, dated October 14, 1930, included among their papers, carries Obata’s signature as one of the two witnesses. Later, in 1942, the Hibi and Obata families were forcibly relocated to the Tanforan detention center, in San Bruno, California, before being transferred to an incareration camp in Topaz, Utah. As painters, the Hibis joined Obata in establishing art schools at Tanforan and Topaz.

A document penned by Matsusaburo chronicles the founding and subsequent fortunes of the Topaz art school. “Rec. 7 was given to us by administration dept. as temporary headquarter for our art school,” reads the note, “and immediately volunteers gathered and cleaned whole building and opened school next day, Oct. 6 1942.” A letter dated November 28, 1942, addressed to Hisako by the director of the San Francisco Museum of Art, strikes an optimistic tone: “It is good to know that you are carrying on your work and that an art school has been established.”

The catalogue for a Topaz exhibition, held in 1945, written in both English and Japanese, lists among the exhibited work three oil paintings by Hisako and four by Matsusaburo. Meanwhile, a loose croquis in the papers, signed “M. Hibi,” depicts an anonymous artist, spied from behind, sketching among the camp’s forbidding barracks.

In addition to these documents, researchers will also discover a wealth of material relating to both Hisako’s and Matsusaburo’s lives and careers prior to and after the Second World War. These include correspondence, announcements, and clippings related to Hisako’s participation in San Francisco Bay Area exhibitions, such as the grandiose 1940 Golden Gate International Exhibition. In the immediate postwar period, the Hibis relocated to New York, a move documented in the papers by black-and-white photographs of the family in Central Park. In an undated interview for San Francisco-based public radio station KQED, a transcript of which is in the collection, Hisako reveals that during these postwar years she was obliged to take on work as a seamstress in New York’s garment district. Following the death of her husband, Hisako returned to San Francisco with her two children, where she resumed painting and exhibiting. Researchers will enjoy paging through the scrapbooks Hisako compiled of these exhibitions, including clippings of reviews, consignment cards, prize notifications, and installation shots that capture the atmospheric and elusive qualities of her later work.

The Hibi Papers thus broaden the Archives’ significant holdings of primary sources related to Japanese-American artists, among them Obata, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Kenjilo Nanao, Roger Shimomura, Toshiko Takaezu, and Masami Teraoka. The collection also adds new perspectives on the importance of the Topaz art school as a model of resilience in the face of suspicion and racism.

Matthew Simms is the Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector for the Archives of American Art.