The Autry Has Big Plans

'Our future no longer fits within these walls,' declares a poster near the entrance to the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park. Indeed. A brochure which announces 'A New Plan for the Autry National Center at Griffith Park' and exhorts the public to 'Get involved!' explains that, 'the City of Los Angeles and the Autry National Center have begun an important public review process for the Autry's plan to modernize and reconfigure its Griffith Park facility.' Plans include 'more than doubling the total amount of exhibition, storage and gallery space.' The Autry wants, in effect, to double the size of the building itself. The facility will contain four new classrooms, a large community meeting room, a bigger museum store, additional outdoor seating at the café and a semi-subterranean parking structure. The proposed project would be implemented in two phases over an estimated six-year period. The Center anticipates a formal city decision in Spring, 2008.

The Autry National Center was established in 2003, formed from the merger of three museums: the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West (formerly the Autry Museum of Western Heritage) and the Women of the West Museum. A guide to the Autry National Center claims that these three entities 'enable the Center to use different lenses, curatorial specialization and distinctive lines of intellectual inquiry to delve into the multifaceted study of the American West.' Thus, while exploring different stories of cultures and peoples, the Center can also examine 'how the interaction of these cultures and peoples affects the complex, evolving history of the American West.' Writing in the New York Times (Nov. 6, 2006), Edward Rothstein sees 'the possibility of a new kind of museum.' He concludes: 'In that age of the Autry Center yet to come, Indians and cowboys will be sharing the same home; little room will be left for self-indulgence.' Bravo. Not only will the museum in Griffith Park provide a more balanced presentation of the history of the American West but it will also move its parking lot to the freeway side of the site so that the first thing visitors will see when approaching the museum will be open space and an inviting landscape featuring native plants, trees and shrubs. The new plan 'takes the Autry from being a museum in a parking lot to a museum in the park.'

Photo courtesy Bob Thompson Griffith Park, the largest municipal park and urban wilderness area in the United States.

A museum in the park it is. But, why is it in the park at all? Gene Autry was a legendary recording artist as well as a television and movie star. He was also a broadcast executive and owner of a major league baseball team. He became one of the richest men in California, with an estimated worth of over $100 million. The well-heeled Autry Foundation could easily have purchased the land on which to build a museum. However, Griffith Park was a well known and well visited venue, and the Autry got a 50-year lease on 12.75 acres for a token one dollar a year (!) The Daily News (Oct. 2, 1986) announced that the Los Angeles City Council had voted unanimously to approve the lease.

Griffith Park is the largest municipal park and urban wilderness area in the United States. In 1882, Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith bought a 4,071 acre chunk of Rancho Los Feliz and, in 1896, he bequeathed most of it to the people of Los Angeles to be used as parkland - '…a place of recreation and rest for the masses…' Griffith believed that public parks were 'a safety valve of great cities…' His observation was ehoed recently by Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai, who fought to prevent developers from building a skyscraper in Nairobi's Uhuru Park: 'I knew that people needed fresh air and space to escape to-especially in crowded cities…' Just so. Fresh air and green space are very much needed in a park-poor city such as Los Angeles. Museums are vital cultural resources, but why should they take bites out ot the open space that is in such short supply here?

When Col. Griffith died, he left a trust fund, specifically designating money for the construction of a Greek amphitheater (built in 1930) and an observatory/hall of science (built in 1935). Could Griffith have imagined the plethora of projects that would follow? A partial list includes Travel Town, boys' and girls' camps, three golf courses, tennis courts, the ever expanding Los Angeles Zoo and the growth anticipating Museum of the American West. Some of the additions to Griffith Park proposed in the much criticized Draft Master Plan are aerial tramways, parking structures and a hotel.

Everyone, it seems, wants to take a bite out of Griffith Park. If the City of Los Angeles continues to offer up Park nuggets and slices to foundations and interest groups, soon it may be allocating seats at the dinner table to commercial entities and corporate partnerships. In a not-so-public process, the City gave the private Autry Foundation a long-term lease on land in Griffith Park. This is public land. It was given to the people of Los Angeles. The Autry reportedly received several hundred thousand dollars of Proposition 40 money, in which case public money will partially fund the museum's planned expansion. (But, hasn't private gain, in the form of money or prestige, at public expense become part of the American Way of Life?)

Quoted in 'Southwest Squabble,' an article by Mindy Farabee in Los Angeles City Beat (June, 2006), the president of the Mt. Washington Homeowners Alliance asks this question: 'Why should the taxpayers allow city officials to give parkland to an effort that will assist the Autry to breach its merger agreement and cannibalize a museum…?' He refers to the Southwest Museum, which Councilmember Jose Huizar (14th District) called the heart and soul of Mt. Washington.

The Southwest Museum, founded in 1907, was the dream of Charles Lummis, the first city editor for the Los Angeles Times, also an amateur anthropologist and historian of the southwest. The museum opened in 1914 as Los Angeles' first museum, and it contains more than 250,000 artifacts in its collection, second only to the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The taxpayers of Los Angeles invested $25 million to create the Southwest Museum Gold Line passenger station, anticipating that the museum would thus become more accessible to both residents and tourists. (The Autry's access, in contrast, is mainly vehicular.)

The Southwest Museum fell on hard times. Some of the pottery, baskets and textiles in its collection were damaged due to inadequate storage facilities in Caracol Tower. The 1994 Northridge earthquake and, later, heavy rains had damaged the tower. 'The threats to the treasures of this collection from the poor condition of the Southwest building have reached a crisis stage,' wrote Duane Champagne of the UCLA Department of Sociology, Native Nations' Law and Policy Center. He wrote John Gray, President of the Autry National Center, to express his 'deep appreciation' for the Center's work in 'conserving, preserving and protecting the vast collection of unique Native American and colonial artifacts.'

Had the Autry galloped to the rescue of the cash-strapped Southwest Museum? According to an article by Margaret Arnold in the Arroyo Seco Journal (October, 2006), 'it was clear that the Autry was to a large extent taking the lead role in the new joint entity…' What was to become of the Southwest Museum? 'Promises were made,' writes Arnold, 'that the Southwest was not riding off into the western sunset. There were to be two museums, separately administered, at two facilities.' The Agreement and Plan of Merger recognized that, 'together, the institutions can become the pre-eminent repository of the history and cultures of Western America…' The merger agreement seemed reassuring: '…the identity and integrity of Southwest Museum will be maintained as part of the Center and the Southwest staff will establish their museum's interpretive agenda creating permanent and temporary exhibitions for presentation in its galleries.' Moreover, '…the parties shall use all reasonable efforts to pay full respect to the historical significance of all structures at the Southwest site, and consult with community groups…with the hope to restore the site to its original glory, recognizing its value to the greater Los Angeles community.'

Nonetheless, Mr. Champagne of UCLA wrote that he was looking forward 'to being able to view the collection at its new home in Griffith Park.' What? The merger agreement provisions and public proclamations of the Autry at the time of the merger strongly suggested that exhibition space in Griffith Park was intended to expand exhibition space for the Southwest collection, not to replace the exhibition space on Mt. Washington.

After four years of negotiations, the Autry has turned the Southwest Museum galleries into warehouse space. The museum hosts a few 'fun activities and events' each weekend from noon to 5 p.m. in the museum store, garden and lower lobby. The current rehabilitation project is due to be completed in 2011, at which time the new Southwest Museum Education and Cultural Center will open with exhibitions of Native American artifacts in two galleries. The Autry's goal is to move 'most of the collection to a new state-of-the-art home in Griffith Park once the Autry's expansionist dreams have been realized.' John Gray defends the Autry's stewardship of the Southwest Museum site, pointing to the $5 million the Autry has already spent on it. Meanwhile, the Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition has held a funeral for the institution. Some see the Autry's plan to transfer the collection to their Griffith Park facility as the 'plundering of a venerable community icon.'

A draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared to address the environmental impacts of the Autry's 'Griffith Park Campus Improvements project,' (Draft EIR No. RP-013-07). The review period was extended through October 18, 2007. Besides the short-term construction impacts on air quality, noise and traffic, the long term effects of the expansion will include further displacement of walkers, runners and equestrians. There will be more vehicular traffic as Mr. Gray expects the expanded Autry to attract another 600,000 visitors a year.

The fate of the Southwest Museum is uncertain. The two exhibition rooms left to it by the Autry plan hardly merit a Gold Line stop. The 12.5 acre Southwest site has considerable potential, and the Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition has a plan for rehabilitating the venue using some of the funds being raised for the Griffith Park expansion. Such a plan would help to protect Griffith Park by mitigating the extent of construction and the increase in traffic.

The Autry National Center deserves praise for its efforts at preservation and protection of the Southwest collection. But it must share that collection equally with a renovated Southwest Museum. Only continuous public outcry might quell the Autry's appetite. Learn more by visiting www.FriendsOfTheSouthwestMuseum.com and www.AutryNationalCenter.org. Read the draft EIR at www.laparks.org/environmental/environmental.htm. Let your voice be heard.