New York Times
AUG 29, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/arts/design/29SOUT.html

Cowboys and Indians Vie, Politely, for a Museum

By JAMES STERNGOLD
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 28 — It is hard to avoid an almost electrical surge
of emotion when browsing in the storerooms of the Southwest Museum
here, which has one of the country's leading collections of American
Indian artifacts. The floors are concrete and the shelves cold steel,
but everywhere there are signs of a vivid, hand-crafted world humming
with an inner life, lost but for many of these objects.

Hanging above one passageway, for instance, rolled neatly in plastic,
is one of the last remaining complete buffalo hide tepees from the
Great Plains. It is just a few feet away from an exceptionally rare,
mint condition birch bark canoe a century old. Tiny sacks of hide
filled with secret ingredients; dolls with unblinking, dark eyes; and
everyday objects enlivened with spiritual symbols are spread across
the thousands of shelves and drawers.

But if awe is the first emotion one feels here, melancholy is the
second, because most of these artifacts have not been out of storage
for decades and probably will not be exhibited anytime soon unless
this important if little known museum embraces some deep changes.
That day may have arrived, but with a curious twist: the Southwest
Museum may have to choose whether its future lies with the Indians or
with the cowboys.

After a scandal a number of years ago in which a former director
illegally sold off some valuable pieces, and then more than a decade
of exploratory talks and efforts to attract a larger audience, the
Southwest Museum is considering an alliance with one of two wealthier
California institutions, both of which would provide new, larger
quarters and far greater access to its collection.

One of the contenders is the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, a
quirky, relatively young but well-endowed institution in central Los
Angeles founded by the cowboy singer and actor Gene Autry and his
wife, Jackie. The other is the Pechanga Band of the Luiseño Indians,
a small tribe that operates a casino midway between here and San
Diego. Both have held out the possibility of a new, expanded home for
the Southwest Museum.

But a partnership with either the Autry or the Pechanga Band raises
new questions. Some Indian groups have criticized the Autry proposal
as a none- too-subtle attempt by the cowboys to take over the
Indians, culturally speaking, while some in the art world have
expressed concern about whether a casino would really be an
appropriate overseer for a major collection of Indian artifacts.

The Southwest, founded in 1907 in the out-of-the- way Mount
Washington neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, is the city's
oldest museum and it is proud of its independence. But it has
acknowledged that its minuscule endowment of less than $5 million and
its modest exhibition space — it is able to show only about 1 percent
of its 350,000 objects — have forced it to consider a partnership to
bring its collection out of obscurity.

"What we have is a world-class collection," said Duane H. King, the
museum's well-regarded executive director. "What we don't have is a
world-class museum." He added, "The most important need we have is
making the collection more accessible to the public."

But having come to that crossroads, the museum faces choices that
present perils. The Southwest, with an invaluable collection and the
respectability that goes with it, is being pursued by two relatively
young institutions that are trying to use their wealth to obtain a
share of that credibility. The Southwest must, in short, find a
partner without appearing to be selling out its autonomy or its
status.

"There are numerous objects in that collection — ceramics, baskets,
things like that — that are the best you will find anywhere," said W.
Richard West, a Southern Cheyenne and the director of the National
Museum of the American Indian, part of the Smithsonian
Institution. "I just hope it can finally get its due. We are all
watching this with great interest and concern. It's important to the
whole community."

The Southwest Museum's collection was put together in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, largely by its founder, Charles Fletcher
Lummis. That was a time when an enormous range of objects were
available that today cannot be found. Its collection is focused on
artifacts from the Southwest, the Great Basin, California, the Plains
and the Northwest coast.

In contrast to the Southwest Museum, the Autry boasts an endowment of
$100 million. Officials at the Autry, in Griffith Park adjacent to
the zoo, have proposed creating an umbrella entity that would handle
administration and fund-raising for both museums but then allow the
two to occupy adjacent buildings and to operate autonomously.

The only remotely similar arrangement exists in the National Museum
of the American Indian. Several years ago it absorbed the George
Gustav Heye Foundation, which, much like the Southwest, once occupied
a little-visited, undersize museum in upper Manhattan. The Heye
collection — consisting of some 800,00 Indian artifacts — has
retained its name at its museum on Bowling Green in lower Manhattan,
but the old foundation no longer exists.

The casino operated by the Pechanga Band is near Temecula, an area
rapidly filling up with housing subdivisions. The band is planning to
expand its operation to include a hotel and a cultural center, where,
it has suggested, it might include a new home for the Southwest
Museum.

"This is still very, very preliminary," said Butch Murphy, the
communications director of the Pechanga Band. "We didn't have a
revenue stream before we had the casino, so we never made any plans
like this. We look at this idea as a means of diversifying."

Duane Champagne, director of the American Indian Studies Center at
the University of California at Los Angeles and himself a member of
the Ojibway tribe, said the Southwest could gain from either
choice. "Their dilemma has always been that they want more visitors,
but their endowment is not huge, and not that many people go to that
location," Mr. Champagne said. "In some ways the Autry has done a
better job of reaching out to both the general community and the
native community. Traditionally, the Southwest focused on collectors.
It's not the cowboys taking over the Indians in my view."

But he added: "Turning to a gaming tribe would be a breath of fresh
air, too. They have lots of money, so to me it makes sense. You want
that native input."

Others are not so sure. "An institution like the Southwest Museum,
which has such enormous potential and could have such a large
educational impact on the city, can never sacrifice its integrity,"
said Richard Koshalek, the president of the Art Center College of
Design in Pasadena and for 20 years before that the director of the
Museum of Contemporary Art here. "They should not be enticed by the
world of entertainment, and they should not be enticed just by money.
In my humble opinion, they need to explore other options."

He added, "There is no room for error."

Mr. West of the Smithsonian said the Southwest's collection was so
important that he had pursued discussions with the museum about
joining forces. But with the National Museum of the American Indian
caught up in the construction of a huge new building in Washington,
it has not been able to continue talks with the Southwest, he said.

"We would have loved nothing better than to have had some closer
relationship with the Southwest Museum, and we have had those
discussions in the past," Mr. West said. "It's just that the timing
was a little bit wrong. But we still are concerned that they find the
best arrangement."

The discussions with the Autry have now moved the furthest. But there
are some substantial hurdles. For one, the Autry has had to struggle
to be taken seriously, in spite of huge efforts in recent years to
increase its big endowment and pursue more scholarly exhibitions.

"We got pretty far and talked for a long time, but some of their
board members resisted," said John Gray, a former banker and now the
executive director of the Autry, acknowledging that his museum had
yet to establish itself as a serious contender among the leading
Indian museums. "They thought the Autry was superficial. So we're
just working harder to explain who we are and what we are trying to
do."

The Autry is in some ways like a strange old ghost town attic of
Western collectibles. It has for instance the actor Vincent Price's
collection of Western motif paintings. There is an Indian brand
motorcycle. The museum also has a cash register from a frontier era
shop, custom-made wagons from Gene Autry's Melody Ranch and a huge
collection of ranch implements.

But in recent years it has made some ambitious acquisitions, received
some important donations and has worked hard on a diverse array of
shows. The shows have ranged from those on Woody Guthrie and
Northwest coast Indian masks to the role of Chinese immigrants and
blacks in the development of the frontier. It even put together a
show of Polish political posters and other public art that used
images from the American West.

The Autry has also tried to present a balanced view. For instance in
an exhibition on George Armstrong Custer it offered visitors two
separate paths, one showing how he was viewed by Indians and another
on how he was viewed by white society.

One major hurdle to a combination with the Autry is resistance to the
construction of any new buildings on parkland. There was opposition
when the Autry itself was built, and some neighborhood groups have
already said they would fight any further loss of open space.
Anticipating the problem, Mr. Gray said he had suggested that the new
building go up in what is now a parking and delivery area behind the
Autry.

Whether that is the best location for showing off the items in the
Southwest's now dark and quiet storehouses remains to be seen. "All
these things," Mr. King said, standing before an open shelf of
buffalo hide moccasins, "tell stories that people ought to be able to
hear."

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company