Japanese American National Museum

The Japanese American National Museum opened its doors in 1992. The museum is located in the Little Tokyo area near downtown Los Angeles, California. It is devoted to preserving the history and culture of Japanese Americans. The museum is home to a moving image archive, which contains over 100,000 feet of 16 mm and 8 mm home movies of Japanese Americans from the 1920s to the 1950s. The museum also contains artifacts, textiles, art, photographs, and oral histories of Japanese Americans.

The museum contains over 130 years of Japanese American history, dating back to the first Issei generation. In 1997, the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center was established by Robert A. Nakamura and Karen L. Ishizuka, to develop new ways to document, preserve and make known the experiene of Americans of Japanese Ancestry. In 1999, the Manabi and Sumi Hirasaki National Resource Center (HNRC) was established to provide access to the museum's information and resources, both at the facility and online, and documents both the life and culture of the Japanese Americans.

The museum currently has three exhibitions. Common Ground: The Heart of Community focuses on early immigration into the United States to the present day by presenting various art, artifacts and media. The second exhibition is titled Living Flowers: Ikebana and Contemporary Art which details the Japanse tradition of flower arrangement, ikebana, while displaying a contemporary expression. It began on June 15, 2008 and ends September 7, 2008. The third and most recent exhibition started on July 12, 2008 and is titled GLORIOUS EXCESS (BORN). This exhibition presents Mike Shinoda's paintings and artwork. It ends on August 3, 2008 and is presented in two part