Southwest Museum

It could have been a scene right out of a Gene Autry horse opera -- a cowboys-versus-Indians-style faceoff, potshots being fired by both sides, a hero riding to the rescue in the final reel. That seems to be the plot line of the drama that is playing out between backers of the Autry National Center of the American West in Griffith Park and those of the Southwest Museum a few miles away in Mount Washington.

Aiming to settle contention over the future of the Southwest Museum, a new support group is forming to raise money for a rehabilitation already in progress, and to boost exhibitions when it reopens. The museum, with its 250,000-piece collection of Native American artifacts, was tottering financially when the Autry National Center took it over in 2003.

Operators of the Southwest Museum say they will close its collections exhibition areas beginning June 30 to make way for at least 3 1/2 years of major repairs to the historic but bedraggled Mount Washington landmark, a move that has alarmed some long-time volunteers and neighbors who fear a permanent closure could follow. But officials at the Autry National Center, which operates the Southwest, say the real message in the move is just the opposite.

In one room at the Southwest Museum on Friday, two dozen children gazed at Zuni bowls and Navajo blankets. In another, third-graders huddled at the foot of a yellow tepee -- business as usual, it might seem, at the oldest museum in Los Angeles. But that man and woman in the lobby -- why were they debating moral responsibility? And that printed notice on the bench -- why are the museum collections disappearing from public view on Saturday? The compound answer is that next week, the Mt.

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.

In a move that concedes a measure of victory to long-term opponents, the Autry National Center has bowed out of a protracted battle for a $175-million expansion of its facility in Griffith Park. City approval of the plan hinged on a recent demand for the Autry to make a legally binding commitment to support the Southwest Museum, located in Mount Washington, as a fully functioning art institution in perpetuity. In a letter delivered to members of the Los Angeles City Council Tuesday, the Autry stated that such a commitment would be irresponsible and that it is withdrawing its proposal.

It's two steps forward and one step back in the herculean effort to conserve the Southwest Museum's collection of Native American art and artifacts. One very soggy step back. Much has been done in the two years since the impoverished museum on Mount Washington merged with the richly endowed Museum of the American West (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage) in Griffith Park, under the umbrella of the Autry National Center.

One of the dirty little secrets of art and cultural history museums is that humans aren't the only ones with a taste for the objects in the collections. Given the chance, insects greedily feast on art and artifacts made of paper, cloth, straw, wood, fur, feathers and leather. They also make nests and give birth to little creepy-crawly things that do more damage. The problem is usually kept under control at well-financed museums with modern buildings.

With its Mission Revival architecture and dramatic tower, the Southwest Museum building on Mt. Washington is often mistaken for a monastery. "People always ask, 'Was it meant to be a museum?' " says Kim Walters, library director for the museum. That question has taken on new urgency in L.A.'s historic preservation community since November, when the Southwest and Autry Museum of Western Heritage agreed to merge.

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.