Renovation Information
Redesigning the JANM Campus
In January 2025, JANM will begin work on the most significant change to its Pavilion since it opened in 1999—a renovation of our Pavilion and an ambitious reimagining of our core exhibition.
Over the next two years, JANM will create a 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 our community made in face of adversity as they fought towards an ever-shifting vision of the future
JANM has contracted design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates and consulting architects HOK for the renovation of its Pavilion. Work is scheduled to begin in January 2025 and be completed in mid-to-late 2026.
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 primary exhibition immediately, entering through the new lobby into 10,150 square-feet of gallery space, adding space gained from former office, hallway, and library spaces to the existing Weingart gallery on the first floor.
The Hirasaki National Resource Center will be relocated to the second floor, allowing the centerpiece of JANM’s collection and exhibition, the barracks from the Heart Mountain concentration camp, to be installed in the central, two-story atrium.
JANM’s second-floor galleries (previously the site of the original core exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of the Community) will be reconfigured to include 6,300 square feet of continuous galleries that will allow the Museum to present larger special exhibitions than current special exhibitions galleries are able to accommodate.
The second floor will also include new classrooms for JANM’s school visits and other programs, as well as dedicated space for interactive Storyfiles that use AI technology to allow visitors to hear the first-person stories of real WWII veterans and victims of the WWII incarceration.
Necessary improvements to heating, ventilation, and cooling for visitor comfort and for the preservation of JANM’s historic collections are also planned.
The renovation and core exhibition is funded by Our Promise, JANM’s $85 million comprehensive campaign for the future.
Top: Concept rendering of JANM’s new core exhibition.
Architectural rendering by Ralph Appelbaum Associates.