About

Dear California Preservation Foundation Conference Attendees:

Welcome to the Angel Island Immigration Station! This is an important place to consider how a historic site can be a relevant observatory connecting the past to the present and the future. The buildings here help tell the history of America’s exclusionary immigration policies and provide opportunities for exploring current issues.

You will spend the morning touring the Detention Barracks where immigrants were incarcerated. After lunch, you’ll experience installations and performances created by UC Berkeley students exploring issues of migration, heritage, and racism; and tour the Angel Island Immigration Station Museum.

Your experience today is the fruit of cross-sector collaborations among our organizations: a public agency, a non-profit organization, and a university. We believe this shows how sites of historic preservation can build connections both among individual people and among institutions.

The student performances are part of A Year on Angel Island, a year-long series of performances, courses, exhibitions, and public programming at UC Berkeley exploring the history of the immigration station and its relevance to current events through dance, theater, storytelling, and art.

We look forward to joining you for a plenary discussion at the end of the day.

Sincerely,

Ed Tepporn

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Casey Dexter-Lee

Angel Island State Park

Mike Garavaglia

Garavaglia Architecture, Inc. 

Lisa Wymore

UC Berkeley Arts + Design

Susan Moffat

UC Berkeley Future Histories Lab