INDEPENDENCE — Manzanar National Historic Site will host museum professionals from Death Valley National Park on Wednesday, Aug. 9, and Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023 for a much-needed exhibit cleaning and inventory.
Entrance to parts of the Visitor Center exhibits will be restricted while curators access exhibit cases and clean priceless artifacts, but visitors are welcome to observe.
“It will be a unique experience for visitors to see some behind-the-scenes museum work,” says Death Valley National Park Curator Sarah Saxe. “We hope visitors will ask questions and learn about how we preserve the items donated to Manzanar.”
Most artifacts are donated to the museum collection from Japanese Americans incarcerated in Manzanar or their families, and they serve as tangible elements of the many stories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. A yearly cleaning of historic objects preserves them so they can help future generations connect to and learn from history.
While some areas of the exhibits will be restricted, other areas in the Visitor Center will remain accessible. Exhibits in Block 14 buildings and outdoors will not be impacted.
The Manzanar Visitor Center is open daily 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The reconstructed buildings on Block 14 are open daily until 4:15 p.m. Manzanar National Historic Site is accessible from dawn to dusk.
Manzanar National Historic Site is located at 5001 Highway 395, six miles south of Independence and nine miles north of Lone Pine. Learn more at https://www.nps.gov/manz or explore “ManzanarNationalHistoricSite” on Facebook and “ManzanarNPS” on YouTube and Instagram.