NIKKEI Wartime | Japanese American National Museum Sets Reopening Date of January 23, 2027
LOS ANGELES, CA (August 21, 2026) – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announces today that the Museum will reopen its newly renovated Pavilion on January 23, 2027. The transformed Pavilion includes new first-floor galleries for the all-new core exhibition, In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy; improved special exhibition galleries on the second floor with the inaugural exhibition, Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo; a new and publicly accessible Hirasaki National Resource Center (HNRC) featuring art and design from the permanent collection, the interactive StoryFiles of George Takei and others, and archival viewing areas; the Kosasa Education Center with two new classrooms; an improved visitor entry experience; and an upgraded HVAC system to preserve JANM’s significant collection of more than 160,000 artifacts. JANM’s Pavilion has been closed since January 6, 2024.
“JANM’s reopening launches us into a new era, one that brings American stories to life and reflects the full richness of our shared history. We look forward to welcoming visitors from around the world to a Pavilion transformed by powerful storytelling, immersive installations, and new technology that connects the stories of the Japanese American community to the urgent issues facing all of us today. These new spaces and experiences will deepen our ability to fulfill our mission, share our extraordinary collection, serve as a beacon for civil rights, and activate memory and the arts to shape a more just and hopeful future, one that inspires, educates, and connects generations to come,” said Ann Burroughs, JANM President and CEO.
Beginning January 23, 2027, JANM will be open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., and until 8 p.m. on Fridays. School and group tours will resume March 1 with reservations to open this fall.
An array of preview events and opening celebration activities will be announced this fall.
New Main Entrance and Renovated Public Galleries
JANM contracted design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates and consulting architects HOK for the renovation of its Pavilion. JANM’s main entry will change to the sweeping curved glass facade. Visitors will enter into the spacious and light-filled Aratani Central Hall. Instead of heading upstairs, visitors will be able to experience JANM’s new core exhibition immediately from the new lobby into 9,200 square-feet of gallery space on the first floor. The new galleries combine the original Weingart Galleries with space captured from former hallways, meeting rooms, offices, and library spaces.
JANM’s New Core Exhibition
JANM’s new core exhibition, In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy, will reimagine how it tells the stories of Japanese Americans by drawing on today’s technological advances and national discussion around race and democracy; include familiar elements to carry the World War II incarceration stories forward; and highlight new stories that explore the choices that the Japanese American community made in face of adversity as they fought towards an ever-shifting vision of the future. The exhibition draws on JANM’s extensive collection, the largest collection of Japanese American history and material culture in the world, to explore 160 years of Japanese American history. Prewar galleries will include clothing and tools from workers on plantations in Hawai‘i, historical artifacts and photographs from growing Japantown communities on the continental US, and compelling prewar home movies that convey the vibrance of the Japanese American community interrupted by unjust incarceration. Well-known objects such as the newly restored Heart Mountain barracks, artist Kristine Aono’s glass box piece Relics from Camp: An Artist’s Installation, and Lance Matsushita’s model of the Manzanar concentration camp will return in the immersive World War II galleries. Among the new stories explored will be experiences from Tule Lake Segregation Center, where the US government imprisoned Japanese Americans who were deemed “disloyal.” Multimedia installations will continue the timeline from postwar resettlement through the Asian American movement and redress. The exhibition brings the Japanese American story into the present, exploring its influence on popular culture from rice cookers to import cars to Hello Kitty and the community’s response to anti-Muslim sentiment following the 9/11 attacks, recent anti-Asian hate, and today’s attacks on immigrant communities.
New Special Exhibition Galleries and Pictures of Belonging
JANM’s second-floor galleries (previously the site of the original core exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community) have been reconfigured to provide 5,500 square feet of contiguous galleries that will allow the Museum to present larger special exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition, Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo will open on January 23, 2027. Future exhibitions will include Ben Sakoguchi: Postcards from Camp (2027); I Am An American: Nisei Soldier Experience from the National Museum of the United States Army (2027); A Generative Legacy of Care, featuring new research on JANM’s extensive collection of World War II art (2029); and Invocation of Beauty: The Life and Photography of Soichi Sunami (2029). Other upcoming hybrid programs include Glenn Kaino: I Am Yoko and Eating Together: Food in Japanese America.
Organized by JANM, the acclaimed nationally touring exhibition Pictures of Belonging reveals a broader picture of the American experience through artworks and life stories of Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo, three trailblazing Japanese American women from the pre–World War II generation. The exhibition features over eighty of their paintings and drawings that were completed over a span of eight decades. Now seen together for the first time, their work reveals the range and depth of their oeuvres and previously unexplored connections. Pictures of Belonging is curated by Dr. ShiPu Wang, the Coats Family Chair in the Arts and Professor of Art History, Department of Global Arts, Media, and Writing Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts at the University of California, Merced, and commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
The exhibition has traveled to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Monterey Museum of Art. In its final showing at JANM, the exhibition will be expanded with additional newly discovered work recently acquired by JANM and on view for the first time. A companion gallery will explore the work of the three artists’ contemporaries, including Chiura Obata, Henry Sugimoto, and others.
The New Hirasaki National Resource Center
The Hirasaki National Resource Center (HNRC) has been relocated to the second floor. Open to the public, the HNRC serves family historians, students, researchers, writers, and other museum visitors with access to reference books, films, and certain government records. In addition to a study area and private archival viewing room, the new HNRC is a welcoming, public space that will showcase mid-century modern art and design by Ruth Asawa, S. Neil Fujita, Isamu Noguchi, and others.
Interactive Storyfiles
The HNRC and nearby spaces will include four new interactive StoryFiles of June Aochi Berk, Takashi Hoshizaki, Mary Murakami, and George Takei, along with the StoryFile of Lawson Iichiro Sakai previously on view. Using AI technology to draw from hours of real, recorded interviews, StoryFiles provide a realistic, conversational experience of engaging with Japanese American concentration camp survivors and veterans to ensure that the history of Japanese Americans during World War II are preserved for generations to come.
The Kosasa Education Center
The second floor will also include the new Kosasa Education Center that consists of two flexible, forty-five-seat classrooms that can be combined into one classroom for larger groups or public programs. The classrooms will support JANM’s school visit programs that serve more than 14,000 K–12 students every year with curriculum-based lessons on Japanese American history.
About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)
Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a center for civil rights, ensuring that the hard-fought lessons of the World War II incarceration are not forgotten. A Smithsonian Affiliate and one of America’s Cultural Treasures, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories. JANM is a center for the arts as well as history. It provides a voice for Japanese Americans and a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over one hundred exhibitions onsite while traveling forty exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America.
PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Japanese American National Museum Pavilion Renovation
Client: Japanese American National Museum
Owner’s Representative: Landmark PM
Architect: HOK
Exhibit Designer: Ralph Appelbaum Associates
General Contractor: Sierra Pacific Constructors
Exhibits Fabricator: nFusion
Specialty Consultants and Vendors:
Structural Engineer: HOK
MEP/FLS Engineer: Coffman Engineers
AV & Theatrical Designer: TheatreDNA
Architectural Lighting : Oculus Lighting Studio
Exhibits AV & Lighting Consultant: Luna Lux
Cost Estimator: Directional Logic
Furniture Vendor: Corporate Business Interiors, Inc.
Signage Designer: Davies Associates, Inc.
Signage Fabricator: JB3D
Plan Check Facilitator: Kimberlina Whettam & Associates
Capital Improvements Consultant: Dawn McDivitt
JANM’s major renovation, the new core exhibition, national programs, and longterm financial sustainability are funded by more than 33,000 donors to the Our Promise fundraising campaign. Major supporters include: George H. Takei & Brad E. Takei, The Toshizo Watanabe Family Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Ahmanson Foundation, Aratani Foundation, Ty Toshi Dote, Earle K. & Katherine F. (Muto) Moore Foundation, Darlene K. Kuba & William T Fujioka, Meloni Midori Mits Hallock Family, Anonymous, Yoichi Komiyama Family, Kosasa Family, Weston & Megumi Koyama, The Lori & Greg Nakahira Family, Mark & Pam Okada Family Foundation, Michael G. Okamura, Perenchio Foundation, Akko Fukuda & Ken Picerne Family, Wendy Shiba & Lawrence Pittman, Patricia J. Shimomura & Clifford J. Louie, Richard & Patricia Shinto Family, Tyler & Peggy Tanaka, Yamagata Foundation, Gordon Yamate & Dr. Deborah Shiba, The Takeo & Miyoko Yuki Family, The Doizaki Family, Robert & Carolyn Fujioka Family, John & Betty Fujioka Family, Helen Funai Erickson, Kenneth S. & Jo Ann Hamamura, Harold & Barbara Mikami Keimi, Fred & Naomi Kurata Family, Mellon Foundation, MUFG, Rod Y. & Elsie M. Nakamoto Family, Gene & Mary Ochi/The Tambour Foundation, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, Sugimoto Foundation George, Ruri, Lisa & Nathan, The Suzukamo Family, Anonymous, W. M. Keck Foundation, Samuel H. Yamashita, The Atsuhiko & Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation, Joanne Watanabe Erceg, Facebook, Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, Hiro E Hishiki, Kashu Mainichi 1954-1991, Hisako Betty Imamura & Family, In loving memory of Akira Imamura, Eugene T. & Grace W. Kimura, John & Sarah Kobara Family, Tsugio & Florence M. (Shimazaki) Kubota, Randall Lee & Stella Jeong, Donna Ikeda & John Morey, Kari L. Nakama, Kristine M. Nishiyama & Family, Roy Y. & Eileen S. Sakamoto, In honor of Takao & Helen Shishino, SMBC Americas Foundation, Sony Group Corporation, Suntory Holdings Limited, Ron Takasugi Family: Honoring Our Legacy, Tina Yamagiwa & Ron Tanemura, Tanimura Family Foundation, Taiji & Naoko Terasaki, and Umami Fund/Tamlyn Tomita & Daniel Blinkoff.
In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy is sponsored by the Kosasa Family, The Ford Foundation, Earle K. and Katherine (Muto) Moore Foundation, National Park Service, Robert T. and Carolyn D. Fujioka, Randall R. Lee and Stella M. Jeong, Rod and Elsie Nakamoto Family, The Ahmanson Foundation, The William Randolph Hearst Foundations, Tanimura Family Foundation, Leslie Furukawa and John Hayashi, Gordon T. Yamate and Deborah A. Shiba, Koji and Angela Fukumura, Nikki Kodama and Family, The Grace Nixon Foundation, George and Hillary Hirose, Karen Ishizuka, Bryan Cooke, Rancho La Siesta LLC, Kato and Associates LLC, and Los Amigos Mobile Home Park LLC. This exhibition was also supported in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.
Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo is made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. In addition, this project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The StoryFiles of Takashi Hoshizaki, Mary Murakami, and George Takei are presented by the Japanese American National Museum and the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation. The StoryFiles of June Aochi Berk and Lawson Ichiro Sakai are presented by JANM. The project was created with the nonprofit Japanese American Stories and is supported by The Freeman Foundation.
Additional support for the StoryFile of Takashi Hoshizaki comes from the Hoshizaki Family Endowment Fund. The StoryFiles of George Takei is supported by Joanne Watanabe Erceg.and June Aochi Berk is supported in honor of Issei Pioneers: Bungoro & Fujino Morey.