California at 250: Why Complexity Matters in Public History
In her recent reflection published in the SF Chronicle, OMCA Executive Director Lori Fogarty considers California’s place in the United States’ 250th anniversary and calls for a more honest, layered approach to public history—one that embraces complexity rather than simplification. Rather than treating California as a straightforward story of progress or prosperity, she presents it as a place shaped by overlapping and sometimes contradictory forces: migration and displacement, opportunity and exclusion, innovation and harm.
A central question in her piece is about narrative authority: who gets to define the story of a place, and which histories are centered when that story is told. Fogarty situates California as especially important to that question because of its long history as both a destination and a point of origin for migration. These movements, spanning centuries and continents, have made the state one of the most culturally diverse in the country—but they have also been marked by violence, forced removal, and inequality.
Rather than separating these realities, Fogarty insists they must be understood together. As she writes, “These are the complex and contradictory stories that must be shared — for and by California.”
She also underscores the responsibility of cultural institutions in shaping how history is understood. Museums, in her framing, are not passive record-keepers. They are active interpreters of memory and meaning, with the power to either flatten history into a single narrative or hold space for its contradictions. Fogarty makes clear that the latter is not just preferable, but necessary.
Another key idea in her reflection is that historical storytelling is inseparable from civic life. The way a society remembers its past directly influences how it understands its present. In this context, Fogarty writes, “We must be places of truth and memory, of resilience and resistance.” This statement reframes museums as civic institutions with a responsibility not only to preserve objects and stories, but to engage the public in difficult and necessary conversations and uplift stories that bind us together.
Importantly, she resists the idea that telling complex histories diminishes a sense of shared identity. Instead, she suggests it strengthens it. By acknowledging both achievement and harm, inclusion and exclusion, California’s story becomes more representative—not less. It reflects the lived experiences of the many communities that have shaped the state across time.
Fogarty also connects this approach to a broader national moment, as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary. In that context, California is not positioned as separate from the national narrative, but as a key site for understanding it. The state’s history of movement, cultural encounters, and transformation reflects many of the central tensions in American history itself.
Ultimately, her reflection calls for a form of public history that uplifts complexity and contradiction rather than flatten it. It asks audiences to sit with contradiction rather than resolve it, and to understand that complexity is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be engaged. In doing so, it reframes history as an ongoing process—one that continues to shape how communities understand themselves and their place in a larger national story.