Autry Museum Of Western Heritage

A framed poster of Leo Carrillo starring as Mexican caballero Francisco "Pancho" Villa in the 1950 film "Pancho Villa Returns" rests, in all its pristine splendor, on a cobalt wall. Tag lines such as "The man who made history with cyclonic fury!" and "The Robin Hood of Mexico" are splashed across the bill, luring potential viewers to witness Villa as a paragon of virtue. But this is not a theater revisiting the golden age of Mexican cinema.

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, when he sank his first set of serious blades into a cedar log, Jim Hart knew he was doing something traditional, something his family and other native Haida had been doing for generations on their islands off the coast of British Columbia. What Hart didn't know is that his carving, from intricate jewelry to 50-foot totems, would win him an international following and set off a series of reunions with his great-great-grandfather.

THREE years after the Autry National Center took control of the impoverished Southwest Museum, Autry leaders and the Southwest's Mount Washington neighbors are still having tense conversations about the center's plans to move most of the Southwest's Native American artifact collection and to boost nonmuseum uses of the Southwest's historic but crumbling campus.

THE majestic landmarks of Yosemite National Park have been so often photographed, by amateurs and professionals alike, that overexposure threatens to obscure what made them compelling subjects in the first place.

"Must you leave so early?" a young woman, dark hair streaming to her waist, says as she reaches out to the young man in front of her. "I must be gone and live, or stay and die," he says. Still, they linger. They kiss. It's a quick kiss. Too quick. In the Autry National Center's Wells Fargo Theater, director Kenneth Martines calls a halt to a rehearsal of the balcony scene from "Kino and Teresa," a Native American version of "Romeo and Juliet."

Given the eagerness with which collectors pursue everything connected to film, from posters to props to press books, the feeble state of film museums around the world comes as a disconcerting surprise. Berlin has a modest facility, and New York has something similar exiled out in Queens, but London's Museum of the Moving Image, and the magical Paris space created by Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise, have both been closed.

The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, three months into merger talks with the financially troubled Southwest Museum, has delayed a crucial joint board meeting, saying the slowdown will allow the Southwest to get more input from community leaders and neighbors who have complained that they've been largely ignored in the process.

Leaders of the Autry and Southwest museums, who delayed their merger efforts last month when the Southwest's neighbors called for reassurances over the fate of its historic Mount Washington building, have not only mended fences with the community but sealed details of their partnership with a joint-board vote.

"Glorious Treasures: 100 Years of Collecting by the Southwest Museum" is a whirlwind tour of two continents and nearly 2,000 years of history. Beginning in what now is Arizona and New Mexico, the exhibition at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage travels from the central valleys of California to the icy tundra of northern Canada and the lush rain forests of eastern Ecuador.

Although fewer people know his name, Fred Harvey had far more impact on the American West than Wyatt Earp or Wild Bill Hickcock. It was Harvey, a transplanted Englishman, who made travel through the Southwest more pleasure than ordeal. And in the process, Harvey created a market for Native American crafts that dominated many tribal economies until the recent introduction of gambling on Indian lands. Harvey is the presiding spirit of a fascinating new show at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage.