b'on view defiant vision:prints & poetry by munio makuuchiAugust 23December 8, 2019THE FIRST MUSEUMexhibition to examine the prints and poetry of Munio Makuuchi (19342000), Defiant Vision was the culmination of almost a decade of interdisciplinary scholarship by curator Aprile Gallant and Professor of English Language and Literature and American Studies Floyd Cheung. This exhibition demonstrates SCMAs commitment to highlighting the work of artists previously left out of art historical narratives and to promoting new scholarship focused on the SCMA collection and by members of Smiths academic community.Since Cheung discovered Makuuchis poetry in 2006, acquiring a manuscript of his unpublished magnum opus From Lake Minidoka to Lake Mendota: And Back to the Northwest Sea for the librarys Special Collections, Smith College has become a centerfor study of the artist. SCMAs collection now includes16 prints, the largest institutional collection ofMunio Makuuchi with his print Solomon Sealing Under Golden Eagle Makuuchis work, and many of Cheungs studentsWings. Photo by M. Neely, 1991have conducted original research on Makuuchibased on the courses he teaches.The exhibition featured more than 50 printsbegan studying painting at the University of Wisconsin, and selected poems (in both written and audio form)Madison, and reached a crescendo after his return which made visible details of the artists life and thefrom seven years teaching in Nigeria, when he began subjects that preoccupied him throughout his career.to actively write poetry. His approach to poetry began One of the major challenges of the project was recov- with cultivating a dreamlike openness to recollections ering the artists personal and artistic history, whichfrom his traumatic past, fears of a nuclear disaster,had been obscured over the years by omission andand love for his family and the natural world. He would neglect. Makuuchi was deeply impacted by his child- let words flow in an automatic fashion into short,hood incarceration at Minidoka, one of 10 camps builtaccessible and moving poems.to house Japanese and Japanese Americans forciblyMakuuchis prints were equally intuitive. His removed from the West Coast during World War II.chosen printmaking medium was drypoint, a linear This was only the first of a series of personal challengestechnique in which the image is scratched into awhich shaped him as a person and an artist. metal plate with a sharp tool, and then inked and Makuuchi studied printmaking as an under- printed. While there are few instances where prints graduate at the University of Colorado and duringand poems are directly related, key themes frequently connecting people to artgraduate studies at the University of Iowa. His matureresonate between his two artistic pursuits. In aperiod of work dated to the early 1970s when helate print inspired by his childhood incarceration,23'