Barbara Takenaga's 25-Year Survey to Open at Kemper Museum of Art

Barbara Takenaga, an accomplished process painter from North Platte, Nebraska, was born in 1949. This October, her work will be featured in an important exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, celebrating 25 years of her creative evolution. She earned both her BFA and MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and taught at Williams College from 1985 until 2018. Her paintings, which include intricate paint strands, often suggest themes of storms and human anatomy. Recently, she's been influenced by Asian art, particularly kabuki woodblock prints. Among her notable exhibitions are a 20-year retrospective in 2017 and a major installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. As a child, she was one of the few Japanese Americans in her school and was encouraged artistically by her mother.