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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 Luise๑o
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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/29/arts/design/29SOUT.html?ex=1000130022&ei=1&en=027063b29560b71e

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