Now on Exhibit through January 25, 2009
	What’s Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era

A landmark exhibition examining the impact of the Vietnam War on California life and culture will be at the Museum of History and Art, Ontario, from September 25, 2008, through January 25, 2009. “What’s Going On? – California and the Vietnam Era,” focuses on events in California from the 1950s Cold War era to the present, with emphasis on the tumultuous years from the escalation of the Vietnam conflict in 1965, through its end in 1975 and beyond.

Why California? During the period in question, California was the epicenter of the war’s national front, containing within its boundaries most of the nation’s defense contractors, the major centers of military training and transport to the war, legendary peace and anti-draft protests, the emergence of Ronald Reagan’s New Right politics, escalating conflicts between “doves” and “hawks,” and the influx of huge numbers of both returning military and refugees from the war-torn areas of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The Vietnam War inflamed an unprecedented social divide on the West Coast, as California became a hotbed of social and political movements that blazed across the country and, ultimately, helped redefine what it meant to be an American. 

Based on a larger exhibition of the same title first developed by the Oakland Museum of California and now touring through the California Exhibition Resources Alliance (CERA), “What’s Going On?” marks the first time a museum undertook an in-depth historical study of how one region was changed by the Vietnam War. The scope of the exhibition reflects the four years of planning that went into its creation, involving extensive research and participation from veterans groups, activists, government agencies, immigration centers, and a Southeast Asian Community Advisory Committee.

Telling the story of California during the Vietnam era through a rich collection of historical artifacts, photographs and documents interwoven with compelling oral histories contributed by veterans, activists, and refugees, “What’s Going On?” challenges the museum visitor to look at history through a new and different lens, viewing the war from a myriad of perspectives that only exist in California, and reinterpreting a deeply contested and often stereotyped period in the history of the state.

Divided chronologically into ten themed sections, the exhibit first explores how the fear of communism affected life in California during the 1950s, and then follows the growing social and cultural divide through the years as the Vietnam War escalated, provoking increased dissent and shifts in thinking about the war from guarded support to “hell, no, we won’t go.” Even the years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 reveal lasting scars from the conflict, not only the grim number of casualties, but the treatment and struggles of returning veterans and Asian refugees alike.