City manager: Carnegie Art Museum collection must be inventoried for NAGPRA compliance; reopening plans on hold

Oxnard City Manager Alex Nguyen told the Inter-Neighborhood Council that the Carnegie Art Museum building has been closed since February 2019 and that the city must first resolve a legal and ethical inventory issue before deciding how the building can reopen.

Nguyen said the museum’s holdings include Native American artifacts and possibly human remains and that federal and California repatriation laws now require a qualified Native American expert to handle and assess the collection before city staff may touch the items. He said the city estimates at least 600 objects in the collection but that the number and provenance are not yet verified.

The issue matters because the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and California’s companion laws require public institutions to inventory certain categories of cultural items, post them for claim, and consult with associated tribes before retaining or transferring them. Nguyen said the museum’s current status is out of compliance and that addressing the collection’s legal obligations is his immediate priority.

Nguyen summarized a concept he presented to the City Council’s Community Services Committee in September 2023: convert the Carnegie from a municipal art museum to a Carnegie Art Center that would provide daytime art instruction for youth, operate as a gallery in the evenings (with revenue-sharing), and be available for weekend special-event rentals. He said he does not believe the Carnegie can successfully operate as a municipally run professional art museum in its present configuration and that the building’s small size and the museum profession’s requirements make a traditional municipal museum difficult to sustain.

Nguyen said the first step is to hire the right outside consultant or museum specialist to complete a NAGPRA-compliant inventory and repatriation review. Under current state and federal rules, he said, city staff may be present when experts handle artifacts but cannot themselves manipulate the objects. The consultant’s work will include cataloguing items, assessing whether human remains are present, and posting findings on the state and federal notices that give tribes and other claimants an opportunity to respond.

Community members at the meeting urged a faster timetable and asked whether the non-Native portion of the collection could be separated from the artifacts that require NAGPRA handling so the building could be used in the interim. Nguyen said that separation is an option in principle but that the Council has not made a final decision about whether the Carnegie should remain a museum or follow the art-center proposal. He also said he would notify the neighborhood when postings on the NAGPRA websites begin.

Several attendees offered local expertise and contacts. Isaac Collard of CBU Estates said a neighborhood council member who works at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History had advised Nguyen and provided a short list of possible experts; Nguyen said he had already spoken with that contact. Nguyen repeatedly emphasized there is no plan to “sell” the collection; he described deaccessioning or selling items only as standard collection management options that a professional museum might use after a lawful process.

Questions at the meeting ranged from whether the Carnegie’s donors or family heirs had been contacted to how reopening would be funded. Nguyen directed attendees to the city’s online budget portal for information about municipal revenues and said revenue decisions about the building would depend on a Council decision about the Carnegie’s future use. He also said youth classes in the proposed art-center model would be treated as part of city youth programming and would not carry fees; gallery sales and special-event rentals would generate revenue for the facility if the Council pursues that model.

Nguyen said he is working to secure consultants and that the inventory and repatriation work will take time. He told the council that complying with legal obligations to tribes is both a legal and a moral priority.

Ending: Nguyen closed by saying staff will return with more information once a consultant is under contract and NAGPRA postings begin; neighborhood representatives asked to be notified when that work starts.