Karin Higa: Hidden in Plain Sight was coorganized by AAPI Arts Network and Japanese American National Museum to highlight the legacy of the late curator, writer, and cultural activist Karin Higa. The program explored and celebrated the intersections of art, community, and organizing in Higa’s work. Among her many accomplishments, Higa was senior curator at JANM from 1992-2006. Her creative, intellectual, and political commitments to Asian American art, the Japanese American experience, the Little Tokyo community, and their deft interweaving with broader contexts, continue to be powerful inspiration for artists, art historians, and many other cultural workers. 

Panelists included Howie Chen, curator and writer who recently edited the book “Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network;” Bruce Yonemoto, an artist who, along with his late brother Norman, worked very closely with Higa on the exhibition “Bruce and Norman Yonemoto: Memory, Matter, and Modern Romance;” and Julie Ault, editor of “Hidden in Plain Sight: Selected Writings of Karin Higa.” The panel was introduced by Higa’s niece and recent JANM Getty Marrow Undergraduate intern, Rose Keiko Higa, and moderated by writer, curator, and organizer Ana Iwataki, who worked under Karin Higa as a JANM Getty Marrow Undergraduate intern. 

This conversation coincided with the publication of “Hidden in Plain Sight: Selected Writings of Karin Higa,” a substantial illustrated volume surveying her curatorial and scholarly work released in October 2022 by Dancing Foxes Press.