Sara Mazo

Sara Mazo Kuniyoshi (July 4, 1910 – November 6, 2006) was an American dancer, actress, and arts administrator born in New York City. She pursued dance from an early age, receiving support from philanthropists Irene Lewisohn and Alice Lewisohn, two sisters with a strong interest in theatre who encouraged her training.

Mazo built her performing career during the 1930s. In 1933 she appeared in a production of Mary Heaton Vorse's Strike in Provincetown. She was a member of the Sara Mildred Strauss Dancers, a company through which she made both of her Broadway appearances: the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 and the revue Calling All Stars, which ran in 1934–1935. Her stage career concluded when she married in 1935.

Following her departure from performing, Mazo contributed writing to several New York publications in the late 1930s. During and after World War II she joined the staff of the Museum of Modern Art, working in the Museum Collection department. She eventually served as assistant curator of museum collections and remained at the institution until her retirement in 1975.

In 1935 Mazo married Japanese-born artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi. She was widowed upon his death in 1953 and spent subsequent decades closely involved with the preservation and exhibition of his work. In 1975 she was honored at an opening reception for Kuniyoshi's work at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas. In 1987 she donated a collection of his photographs to the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. During the 1990s she gave the Children's Museum of the Arts a collection of children's art produced in Works Progress Administration classes in New York City during the 1930s. She provided an oral history interview to the Museum of Modern Art in 1993 and was guest of honor at the Woodstock Beaux Arts Ball in 2003. Materials she collected and created are held in the Yasuo Kuniyoshi Papers at the Archives of American Art. Mazo died on November 6, 2006, at the age of 94.