Author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $20 million to the Japanese American National Museum, the largest single gift ever made to the downtown Los Angeles institution.<\/p>\n
The donation is on top of a 2021 gift of $10 million made by Scott to the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are extraordinarily grateful to MacKenzie Scott for her historic vision and generosity,\u201d museum President\/CEO Ann Burroughs said in a statement Wednesday. \u201cThis remarkable gift comes as JANM is poised for a new and exciting future. We enter the new year with a re-invigorated commitment to our mission, stronger-than-ever support from the community, and great anticipation for a transformed museum experience when we reopen in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer first gift of $10 million made it possible for JANM to expand our programming as well as to serve our community and reach new people throughout our current renovation. A validation of the importance of our mission and the impact of our programming, this new gift brings a unique opportunity for JANM to invest in its future, to attain a new level of financial stability, and to lean into its legacy as a keeper of history and a beacon of democracy and social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The museum\u2019s board and executive team are expected to determine how the funds will be used.<\/p>\n
JANM has been closed for renovations since January, although it has continued to sponsor special exhibitions and programs both locally and abroad. The renovation is described by the museum as the most ambitious overhaul of the facility since its 1999 opening.<\/p>\n
The renovation work will include the addition of a core exhibition that will \u201creimagine\u201d how the museum tells stories of Japanese Americans. It will also include upgrades to JANM\u2019s Aratani Central Hall and a relocated and updated Manabi and Sumi Hirasaki National Resource Center that will feature dedicated space for interactive Storyfiles that use AI technology to allow visitors to hear the first-person stories of real World War II veterans and victims of World War II incarceration. There will also be new classrooms and improvements to the museum\u2019s environmental systems to help preserve its collection of more than 160,000 artifacts and artworks.<\/p>\n
Scott, 55, was married to Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon, from 1993 to 2019. In 2006, Scott won an American Book Award for her debut novel, \u201cThe Testing of Luther Albright.\u201d Her second novel, \u201cTraps,\u201d was published in 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has donated $20 million to the Japanese American National Museum, the largest single…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":442273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[203930,8015,1582,276,38980,35849,2961,224,5337,138742,11365,1571,10612],"class_list":{"0":"post-442272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-20m","9":"tag-american","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-gifts","13":"tag-japanese","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-mackenzie","18":"tag-museum","19":"tag-national","20":"tag-scott"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115706395687079607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}