Oxnard—City Manager Alex Nguyen leads Oxnard forward with a simple philosophy: openness, honesty, and transparency. During the City Council’s August break, the Executive Team and all his teammates remain hard at work moving the City forward.
Nguyen discussed many topics and said there has been no movement to realize his vision of transforming the Carnegie Art Museum into the Carnegie Arts Center.
A vision on hold
“The concept was proposed, and the community said don’t do that,” he said. “They premised it on a lie, selling the art collection.”
He said the Council wants details; an update is coming this fall.
“In the process of gathering more details,” he said. “I came across the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Federal law provides for the protection and return of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. By enacting NAGPRA, Congress recognized that human remains of any ancestry “must always be treated with dignity and respect). “That’s my next step, dealing with that.”
He said there are more than legal reasons, but there are moral reasons to deal with the issue; he can’t believe it was ignored for so long.
“It’s something widely…
