Michiko Itatani is a Chicago-based artist. In her youth, she studied literature and philosophy and wanted to become a fiction writer. Following her writing teacher’s advice, she decided to do something she had never done before in a place she had never been before. She came to the U.S.A. in the early 1970’s and studied visual art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She started to show her paintings and installation work in 1973 and she has been active in the field ever since.
Michiko Itatani’s work has been seen in more than 100 one-person and group exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally. The largest of these solo exhibitions were at the Alternative Museum, New York City (1985); Rockford Art Museum, Illinois (1987); Musée du Quebec, Canada, (1988); Muskegon Museum, Michigan (1992); Chicago Cultural Center(1992); Wright Museum of Beloit College, Wisconsin(1994); Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta(1995); Shinjuku Park Tower Gallery, Tokyo(1996); Tokoha Museum, Shizuoka, Japan(1998); Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana(1998); Elmhurst Museum, Elmhurst, IL(1999); Frauen Museum, Bonn, Germany(2000); University of Wyoming Art Museum, WY(2002); Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, MO(2003), South Bend Museum of Art, IN(2014); Zhou B Art Center, Chicago(2016); Hatheway Cultural Center, Godfrey, IL(2017); Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL(2017).
She has received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Marie Sharp Walsh New York Studio Grant and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship among others. She was selected by the Women’s Caucus for a Lifetime Achievement Award 2020.