Oxnard—The Community Services, Public Safety, Housing, and Economic Development Committee, Tuesday, March 10, heard an update on its Municipal Carnegie Arts Museum and voted unanimously to advance it to the City Council.
City Manager Alex Nguyen presented the item, and he said the building was built in 1906 and was designated as a Municipal Art Museum in 1985.
“It was closed in 2019, because of the budget deficit, and in the fall of 2023, I brought a concept for its future use as an Arts Center rather than a Museum,” he said. “The Committee tabled that discussion and asked for more consideration/options.”
After the Fall 2023 meeting, he said they discovered that the Carnegie hadn’t complied with Federal and State Laws, which require institutions, such as Museums, to return native belongings to their rightful owners.
“In this report, you will hear about NAGPRA and its sibling or cousin, CalNAGPRA,” he said. “NAGPRA stands for Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which is a Federal Law that went into effect in 1990.”
CALNAGPRA is the State’s version of the Federal one, and he said it went into law in 2001.
“This is the California Native American Commission,” he said.…
