JANM Receives Over $5.4 Million in Major Foundation, Corporate, and Government Support in 2022

LOS ANGELES, CA – In 2022, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) received over $5.4 million in grants from twenty-three major foundation, corporate, and government agencies.

The Perenchio Foundation awarded $2,550,000, to JANM, which will provide crucial support for the Museum as a whole, allow the Museum to continue to tell the stories of Japanese Americans in innovative, educational, and eye-opening ways through the arts, and foster spaces for cross-cultural dialogue to empower all historically marginalized minorities. 

The Aratani Foundation awarded two grants for the total of $950,000 to support general operations, the annual benefit, and the Comprehensive Campaign, which will enable the Museum to reach larger audiences through national programming, use technology to elevate the stories JANM tells, and reimagine the Museum’s core exhibition.

The Ahmanson Foundation awarded $416,000 to support capital renovations, including installing new roofing on the Historic Building that was formerly the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple and on the portion of the Museum’s main building—The Pavilion—that houses the Museum Store. The project is necessary in order to maintain operations, preserve important architectural and historical elements, and continue to be careful stewards of these important cultural landmarks in Los Angeles. 

The Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program awarded $327,974 for Preserving America’s Community Treasures (PACT): The Toyo Miyatake Collection which will support the collaboration between JANM and Toyo Miyatake Studio to evaluate, curate, digitize, catalog, and present the Toyo Miyatake Photographic Collection on the Museum’s website as a digital collection. With this grant, the Museum will help reveal how wartime incarceration completely upended the lives of Japanese Americans. The digital collection is slated to be available online in 2025.

The JACS grant program also awarded $175,903 for Eating Together: Food in Japanese America, an experiential exhibition that focuses on what food was like in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II. Through photographs, artifacts, multimedia, and interviews with the Sansei, this exhibition will investigate how incarcerees remembered their food experiences, how Issei and Nisei transmitted their knowledge and memories of food to younger generations, and how wartime incarceration shaped the way food was consumed and understood postwar. JANM will also work with community partners to create public programs exploring Japanese American food culture, including during the wartime incarceration.The exhibition is slated to open in 2024.

The Terra Foundation awarded $150,000 for an upcoming exhibition entitled Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo featuring three American artists who share the distinction of being trailblazing women of Japanese descent of the pre-World War II generations in California. The exhibition will showcase over one hundred objects of these artists, objects that illustrate their lifelong commitment to exploring art as a productive means of storytelling and engaging with heterogeneous communities. The exhibit will travel to Utah and other states from 2024 to 2026.

Toyota Motor North America awarded $100,000 in 2021 for the Museum’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion program developed by JANM’s Education Department. The funds were extended through 2022 to complete the project. In response to anti-Asian violence and discrimination, JANM is developing a program for corporations, foundations, and organizations who seek to provide professional development in this field of expertise. JANM is uniquely positioned to tell this story through the lens of the Japanese American World War II experience and by utilizing its rich collection to illustrate and contextualize the roots of anti-Asian sentiment and racism. A second grant of $62,750 was awarded to the Museum as sponsorship of its 2023 Annual Benefit. The Benefit is JANM’s largest fundraising event of the year and serves as a much-anticipated opportunity for people, especially those in the Japanese American community, to come together in support of an important institution and its wide-ranging work.

Toyota also awarded $100,000 to support the Museum’s award-winning Bid for Education school visits, mobile education lab, and teacher training programs. Bid for Education provides essential support for the Museum’s educational programming by serving young visitors with the highest need at a formative time in their learning.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded $105,787 to continue the preservation of the Henry Sugimoto Collection, one of the most popular and prized collections of artwork housed at JANM. Given Sugimoto’s unique style and approach to his creative practice, his work is highly requested by researchers. Preserving this collection not only keeps Sugimoto’s perspective and stories alive, but also serves an important educational purpose by allowing students and scholars to continue to be able to view his works.

The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation awarded $100,000 to support the Museum’s general operations. This includes the re-launching of the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, a series of programs celebrating the Museum’s 30th anniversary since opening to the public in 1992, digital film festivals, and free family festivals. Through this work, JANM will continue to share Japanese American history and culture and examine intersections between the experiences of Japanese Americans and people of different backgrounds and interests. JANM will also transform attitudes and encourage participation in a democracy by telling stories that advance liberty, equality, and justice.

The Henri & Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation awarded $75,000 to support the production of Nobuku Miyamoto: Not Yo’ Butterfly, a sixty-minute documentary film that tells the story of the remarkable life of a Japanese American artist and activist.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded $75,000 to support the upcoming exhibition, Cruising J-Town: Nikkei Car Culture in Southern California. This NEH grant will allow JANM to create an exhibition that explores Nikkei (Japanese emigrants and their descendants) car culture from the early 1900s to the present. Both a companion documentary and catalog/book will accompany the exhibition, which will open in 2025.

MUFG awarded $60,000 to support JANM’s education programs through a sponsorship of the 2023 Annual Benefit as well as a gift in honor of Norman Y. Mineta.

The Dwight Stuart Youth Foundation awarded $55,000 to support all of the Museum’s extensive educational programming including School Visits, Virtual Tours, and free family festivals like the new year celebration, Oshogatsu, and the summer festival, Natsumatsuri. 

The Freeman Foundation awarded $50,000 for the development of additional StoryFiles like the Museum’s The Interactive StoryFile of Lawson Iichiro Sakai. These interactive experiences conserve our ability to have conversations and to capture and preserve diverse stories for future generations. JANM will create two new interactive video displays capable of responding to visitors’ questions. These two displays will feature Mrs. Mary Murakami, a Topaz incarceree who shares her story with people of all ages to prevent a future denial of civil rights and liberties, and Dr. Takashi Hoshizaki, a Heart Mountain incarceree and one of the last living draft resisters who refused to fight until his family’s rights were restored. 

The National Endowment for the Arts awarded $40,000 to support the upcoming exhibition, Glenn Kaino: Fox and Stork. Inspired by the Japanese fable of the fox and the stork, artist Glenn Kaino will create a new monumental artwork aligning the two nemeses together in collaboration to steal the sun from the sky—a metaphor for the ambition and innovation that has transformed the US over the past three decades. This work will create a powerful icon that references the past, present, and future in a moment of collaboration that is designed to harness the spirit of innovation and create a collective moment of hope. Glenn Kaino: Fox and Stork is scheduled to open in May 2023.

The Nissan Foundation awarded $35,000 for the Museum’s School Visits program and family festivals. The School Visits program supports the Museum’s  mission to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. The program’s school group visits and virtual tours encourage students to build personal connections, think critically, and engage in participatory learning. Nissan Foundation grants are awarded annually to support organizations educating the world on the benefits of a more diverse and inclusive society. 

“JANM is a pioneer in serving diverse communities of color. We are deeply grateful for this support which enables us to provide programming that amplifies the unique lessons of Japanese American history, to educate future generations about the experiences of Japanese Americans, to combat rising divisiveness and discrimination, and to shape a future based on social justice and a vibrant culture of democracy,” said Ann Burroughs, President and CEO.

In addition to these grants, seven grants have been awarded to JANM since July 2022: 

• Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, $27,100.
• GoFundMe AAPI Campaign, $25,000.
• Bank of America, $20,000.
• The Walt Disney Company / Disney Branded Television, $20,000
• E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, $15,000. 
• Asian Arts Initiative, $15,000.
• The Grace Nixon Foundation, $10,000.

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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 hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories and strives to provide a voice for Japanese Americans as well as a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 70 exhibitions onsite while traveling 17 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. JANM is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday–Sunday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and is free on Thursday from 12 p.m.–8 p.m. Starting in January 2023, JANM will be free every third Thursday of the month. On all other Thursdays, JANM will be free from 5 p.m.–8 p.m. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.