Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, a late Japanese American collagist who lived and worked as a street artist in New York City, is the subject of a new solo exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas City, on view through June. Co-curators Maki Kaneko and Kris Imants Ercums organized the show thematically rather than chronologically, reflecting Mirikitani's fragmented life—from surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and incarceration at Tule Lake to arriving in New York in the 1950s. The exhibition draws on years of research, including visits to the parks where he lived and to Hiroshima, and builds on Linda Hattendorf's 2006 documentary *The Cats of Mirikitani*.
This exhibition matters because it represents one of the first serious institutional examinations of Mirikitani's practice, elevating an artist long overlooked by the art market and art history. His collages, which blend political photography, diary entries, and drawing, offer eyewitness interpretations of major world events and assert his identity as an artist despite being marginalized. By centering his work, the show challenges conventional narratives about who qualifies as an artist and expands the canon to include street artists and those who operated outside traditional gallery systems.