Ben Sakoguchi
Ben Sakoguchi is a Japanese-American artist who was born in San Bernardino, California. At age five, his family was interned at the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona.Education
In 1960, Sakoguchi earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1964, Sakoguchi earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of California, Los Angeles.Career
Sakoguchi was an art instructor at Pasadena City College from 1964 until his retirement in 1997.
Sakoguchi is best known for his small paintings that were created in series, often with socially relevant themes, such as slavery and the internment of Japanese Americans. Sakoguchi is known for his Orange Crate Label series. Aphrodisiac Brand, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, is a mock orange-crate label. Is shows a rhinoceros slaughtered for its horn, which is erroneously believed to be an aphrodisiac or a cure for cancer in Traditional Chinese Medicine as Cornu Rhinoceri Asiatici. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Columbia Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Fogg Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Queensland Art Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum are among the public collections holding work by Ben Sakoguchi.
