The Friends of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum is honored to receive a donation of funds from the Juneau Community Foundation’s Empty Chair Project Fund. This money will go toward providing buses for school groups to visit the museum and learn about Juneau history.
Margie Shackelford, Chair of the Empty Chair Project, commented, “The members of the Empty Chair Committee are pleased that we were able to donate the remainder of our funds to the Friends of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum for the purposes of providing bus transportation for student visits to the Museum. The City Museum has been a loyal partner in all that the Empty Chair Project has endeavored to accomplish. Educating our youth is high among our priorities. This includes the dramatic and varied history of the city of Juneau alongside the poignant story of the Empty Chair. We hope this gift provides additional motivation for student visits to the Museum over time and into the future for lessons focused on Juneau’s past. A big thank you to the staff and leadership of the Museum for all they have done for us.”
The Empty Chair project began in 2010 as an effort to attain local recognition for the forced removal of Japanese Americans from Juneau and the rest of the West Coast during World War II. The Empty Chair Memorial was dedicated on July 12, 2014, and it symbolizes the empty chair left to honor valedictorian John Tanaka at his high school graduation in 1942 after he and his family were removed from Juneau and sent to Minidoka Internment Camp earlier that spring. In addition to creating the memorial, the Empty Chair Project has focused on education: Providing curriculum and kits for the Juneau School District, bringing presenters to town, hosting history events, and participating in the Juneau-Douglas City Museum’s exhibit “The Forced Removal and Resettlement of Juneau’s Japanese Community, 1941-1951.” As a part of the project, committee member Karleen Grummet also wrote “Quiet Defiance: Alaska’s Empty Chair Story,” which describes this period of Juneau’s history and the Empty Chair Project itself.
“Quiet Defiance” is currently available in the City Museum’s gift shop.
The Juneau-Douglas City Museum fosters among its diverse audiences an awareness of Juneau’s cultural heritage, values and community memory so we may draw strength and perspective from the past, inspire learning, and find purpose for the future. As a public trust, we collect, preserve, interpret, and exhibit those materials that document the cultures and history of the Juneau and Douglas area.
More information about the City Museum can be found on the museum’s website: www.juneau.org/library/museum. The City Museum is located at 4th and Main streets, and the phone number is 586-3572. Summer hours are Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. and, beginning July 2, Sunday 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Summer admission is $6 for general admission, $5 for ages 65 and older, and free for ages 12 and younger, as well as Friends members at the Family level and higher.
