The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announces JANM on the Go, the museum’s lively schedule of special exhibitions, public programs, family festivals, education programs, and more on the JANM campus, throughout Little Tokyo, the greater Los Angeles area, Southern California, and across the U.S. and Japan.
“JANM is a cornerstone of the Little Tokyo community and a powerhouse on the national and international stage,” said Ann Burroughs, president and CEO. “We are proud to host the largest repository of Japanese American history and to share the stories beyond our campus walls. With JANM on the Go, we will expand our presence and broaden our reach. We invite people to discover all of the exciting opportunities that JANM has to offer about the important lessons and perspectives of the Japanese American experience.”
In 2025, JANM will embark on a renovation of its Pavilion and an ambitious reimagining of its core exhibition. JANM will say farewell to its longtime core exhibition “Common Ground: The Heart of Community” on Jan. 5, after which the Pavilion will close to the public. Once the updates and renovation begin, the museum will travel beyond its walls with robust in-person and virtual offerings and into communities near and far to share the important lessons of history and the Japanese American experience.
A highlight of JANM on the Go for the Los Angeles community will be the exhibition “Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community,” presented by JANM from July 31–Nov. 12 at the Mullin Gallery, ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
Curated by writer and scholar Oliver Wang, this exhibition chronicles the ways the Japanese American community has fueled evolutions in car culture while also exploring the world of cars and trucks as powerful vehicles for personal expression, collective identity, and social mobility. “Cruising J-Town” is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
From 2025–2026, JANM’s exhibition “Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo” will travel to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania; and the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey as part of its national tour before its final stop at JANM in late 2026.
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 UC Merced, and commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, “Pictures of Belonging” reveals a broader picture of the American experience by presenting artworks and life stories of three trailblazing Japanese American women of the pre–World War II generation that will be in dialogue with each other for the first time.
The exhibition 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.
Throughout JANM on the Go, the museum will continue to host its Oshogatsu and Natsumatsuri festivals in Little Tokyo and the Los Angeles area. Oshogatsu will be on the Norman Y. Mineta Democracy Plaza at JANM in January 2025 and in Little Tokyo in January 2026. Natsumatsuri will be held off-site in August 2025. The festivals are vibrant and joyful celebrations that celebrate Japanese and Japanese American cultural traditions; foster understanding, appreciation, and respect for cultural diversity; and build meaningful cross-cultural bridges.
JANM’s Historic Building and Tateuchi Democracy Forum will remain open throughout the renovation. The Daniel K. Inouye National Center for the Preservation of Democracy (Democracy Center) will present Distinguished Lecture Series, Civic Season, The Grand Event, panel discussions, and other programs that convene people of all ages and diverse backgrounds to examine issues about race, identity, and social justice to transform attitudes, celebrate culture, and promote civic engagement.
Public programs and popular series like JANM Book Club and art workshops will continue to serve new and diverse communities in and beyond Little Tokyo, as well as be livestreamed online. JANM will also participate in community events including the Los Angeles County Fair, AAPI Joy at the Los Angeles Public Library, Monterey Park Cherry Blossom Festival, and other festivals through Southern California, bringing arts and craft activities as well as innovative experiences that use technology to bring the Japanese American experience to life.
Virtual field trips with JANM’s educators will also be offered for Grades 1–12. These visits serve thousands of students in 16 states annually, and educators will continue to bring these crucial online lessons about American history into classrooms in Los Angeles and beyond.
During the renovation, JANM’s Education Department is also developing a pilot program to bring educators directly into selected classrooms in person. Virtual tours for adult groups will also be available, along with the new corporate DEI training program, “History Unpacked.”
Discover Nikkei, a community website and international network that brings JANM’s digital presence to a national and international audience, will celebrate its 20thanniversary and launch its ambitious new redesign with a day of family activities and workshops, a multilingual panel discussion, and a reception spotlighting NIkkei food on Feb. 8, 2025 in JANM’s Historic Building.
Published in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, Discover Nikkei’s content includes contributions from hundreds of community members in over fifty countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Mexico, and Peru.
Since its installation at JANM in September 2022, The Ireichō: Sacred Book of Names has become a site of pilgrimage for families from around the world who have come to JANM to memorialize the more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent who were unjustly incarcerated by the U.S. during World War II. The Ireichō exhibition at JANM ends Dec. 1, 2024, and JANM will partner with The Irei Project and USC’s Duncan Ryuken Williams to travel the book in conjunction with pilgrimages to a number of former War Relocation Authority, Department of Justice, and Wartime Civil Control Administration incarceration sites.
JANM, with StoryBoldly and OutsideIn Theatre, has presented the national tour of David Ono’s moving live storytelling performance, “Defining Courage.” In 2025 and 2026, the show will be presented in Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, and Berkeley.
JANM’s Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center (MAC) will bring the award-winning documentary “Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement” to a number of university campuses in 2025, and the forthcoming film “Third Act,” about filmmaker Robert Nakamura, will be screened at film festivals across the county. Selected MAC films will also be screened at Japan Society in New York and at the Japanese Overseas Migration Museum in Yokohama.
In 2026, Emily Anderson, curator of the forthcoming exhibition “Eating Together: Food in Japanese America” will share her research and expertise with other Japanese American organizations in pop-up events that explore the NIkkei food traditions in their communities. Cities will include Seattle, Denver, and other locations. The exhibition will come to JANM in 2026–2027 with an array of public programs created in partnership with the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center.
JANM on the Go will also have a presence in Japan. The museum’s exhibition “Japanese American History and Art from JANM’s Collection,” will be on view in Nagoya and Yokohama and “BeHere/1942” will be on view at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. JANM will also further its sister museum program with the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama.
The JANM Store extends JANM’s mission through its distinctive selection of books, films, toys, and exclusive products that celebrate and honor Japanese American history. While the in-person store will be closed during renovation, its popular catalog and online store, janmstore.com, will be available throughout JANM on the Go.
Details on these programs and other new programs to be announced will be available at janm.org/OnTheGo.
”In the Future We Call Now”
JANM’s major renovation of the Pavilion will make way for its new core exhibition, “In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Dreams of Democracy.” The exhibition will re-imagine 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 from the current core exhibition to carry the World War II incarceration stories forward; and highlight new stories that explore the choices the community made in face of adversity as they fought towards an ever-shifting vision of the future.
Visitors will encounter the new galleries through a relocated entrance into Aratani Central Hall, which will be transformed into a new lobby. JANM’s second-floor galleries will be reconfigured to include 6,300 square feet of continuous galleries that will allow JANM to present larger special exhibitions. Visitors will also be able to follow along online and on social media as JANM’s collections and curatorial team prepare artifacts and the stories they reveal for the new core exhibition.
Slated to open in 2026, “In the Future We Call Now” is supported by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library, and by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.
For more information, visit www.janm.org.