Former name | Southwest Museum of the American Indian |
---|---|
Established | 1907 |
Dissolved | 2022 |
Location | 234 Museum Drive Los Angeles, California |
Coordinates | 34°06′01″N118°12′21″W / 34.1004°N 118.2059°W |
Founder | Charles Fletcher Lummis |
Architect | Sumner Hunt |
Public transit access | Southwest Museum |
Website | theautry |
Built | 1912–1914 |
Architectural style | Mission/Spanish Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 92001270 |
LAHCM No. | 283 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | March 11, 2004 |
Designated LAHCM | August 29, 1984 |
The Southwest Museum of the American Indian was a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco canyon and stream. The museum was owned, and later absorbed by, the Autry Museum of the American West. Its collections dealt mainly with Native Americans. It also had an extensive collection of pre-Hispanic, Spanish colonial, Latino, and Western American art and artifacts.
Major collections included American Indians of the Great Plains, American Indians of California, and American Indians of the Northwest Coast. Most of those materials were moved off-site. [1] The Autry and the Southwest Museum hold the second-largest collection of indigenous art and artifacts in the country, second to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. [2]
The Metro A Line stops down the hill from the museum at the Southwest Museum station. About a block from the A Line stop is an entrance on Museum Drive that opens to a long tunnel formerly filled with dioramas, since removed by the Autry Museum and placed in storage. At the end of the tunnel is an elevator to the museum's lower lobby.
The museum closed permanently in September 2022.
Charles Fletcher Lummis, an anthropologist, historian, journalist, and photographer, created the Southwest Society, which was the western branch of the Archaeological Institute of America. He gained the support of city leaders, and with the financial backing of attorney Joseph Scott, opened the Southwest Museum in 1907. The collection was first exhibited in downtown Los Angeles' Pacific Electric building, then moved to the May Company building in 1908, and finally to the Mt. Washington site in 1914. [3]
The 1914 building was designed by architects Sumner P. Hunt and Silas Reese Burns. [4] Later additions to the museum include the Caroline Boeing Poole Wing of Basketry (completed 1941), by architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, and the Braun Research Library (1971), by architect Glen E. Cook.
Frederick Russell Burnham, the highly decorated military scout and father of the international scouting movement, was an early president. [5]
In 1993, Patrick Houlihan, the director of the museum from 1981 to 1987, was convicted on five counts of embezzlement and two counts of grand theft for selling or trading about 20 items from the museum's collection. [6] In a civil lawsuit, the museum alleged that Houlihan took 127 items worth an estimated $2.2 million. [7]
In 2003, the financially teetering museum was absorbed by the Autry Museum, which designated it as its Mt. Washington Campus. [8] The museum ceased operating full-time, and closed entirely in September 2022. The museum's collections were relocated to a new controlled environment facility, which opened in October 2022. [2]
Following years of controversy with the Friends of the Southwest Museum and other local community organizations, the Autry began a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the City of Los Angeles to develop a long-term plan for the site. On January 22, 2015, the Southwest Museum was designated a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. [9] [10] In March 2019, the Autry and the National Trust published a Request for Interest for the revitalization and reuse of the historic Southwest Museum campus and Casa de Adobe. [11] As of November 2022, the Autry is no longer seeking to renovate the building for use as a museum space, which would cost over $100 million, and is instead looking to sell the building. [2]
The Centinela Adobe, also known as La Casa de la Centinela, is a Spanish Colonial style adobe house built in 1834. It is operated as a house museum by the Historical Society of Centinela Valley, and it is one of the 43 surviving adobes within Los Angeles County, California. The Adobe was the seat of the 25,000-acre (100 km2) Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela, a Mexican Alta California-era land grant partitioned from the Spanish Las Californias era Rancho Sausal Redondo centered around the Centinela Springs.
The Bowers Museum is an art museum located in Santa Ana, California. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 100,000 objects, and features notable strengths in the areas of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Native American art, the art of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and California plein-air painting. The Bowers organizes and hosts special exhibitions from institutions throughout the world, and travels exhibitions nationally and internationally. The museum has a second campus two blocks south of the main site, Kidseum, a children's museum with a focus on art and archaeology. The Bowers Museum and Kidseum are located in Santa Ana 6.4 km south of Disneyland.
El Presidio Real de Santa Bárbara, also known as the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara, is a former military installation in Santa Barbara, California, United States. The presidio was built by Spain in 1782, with the mission of defending the Second Military District in California. In modern times, the Presidio serves as a significant tourist attraction, museum and an active archaeological site as part of El Presidio de Santa Barbara State Historic Park.
The California African American Museum (CAAM) is a museum located in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California, United States. The museum focuses on enrichment and education on the cultural heritage and history of African Americans with a focus on California and western United States. Admission is free to all visitors. Their mission statement is "to research, collect, preserve, and interpret for public enrichment the history, art and culture of African Americans with an emphasis on California and the western United States."
USC Pacific Asia Museum is an Asian art museum located at 46 N. Los Robles Avenue, Pasadena, California, United States.
America's 11 Most Endangered Places or America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places is a list of places in the United States that the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers the most endangered. It aims to inspire Americans to preserve examples of architectural and cultural heritage that could be "relegated to the dustbins of history" without intervention.
Charles Fletcher Lummis was a United States journalist, and an activist for Native American rights and historic preservation. A traveler in the American Southwest, he settled in Los Angeles, California, where he also became known as a historian, photographer, ethnographer, archaeologist, poet, and librarian. Lummis founded the Southwest Museum of the American Indian.
Architectural Resources Group is a firm founded in 1980 by Bruce Judd and Steve Farneth in San Francisco, California. It began by providing professional services in the fields of architecture and urban planning with particular expertise in historic preservation. In 2000, David Wessel, a Principal of ARG, founded a separate conservation-contracting division, ARG Conservation Services which operates under the same roof as ARG. By 2005, the firm had expanded to a full-service architecture firm with 50+ employees. ARG also opened offices in Pasadena serving Southern California, and Portland, Oregon, serving the Pacific Northwest.
The Autry Museum of the American West is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and public programs, including lectures, film, theater, festivals, family events, and music, and performs scholarship, research, and educational outreach. It attracts about 150,000 visitors annually.
Southwest Museum station is an at-grade light rail station on the A Line of the Los Angeles Metro Rail system. It is located near the intersection of Marmion Way at Museum Drive in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles. The station opened on July 26, 2003, as part of the original Gold Line, then known as the "Pasadena Metro Blue Line" project.
Save America's Treasures is a United States federal government initiative to preserve and protect historic buildings, arts, and published works. It is a public–private partnership between the U.S. National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services are also partners in the work. In the early years of the program, Heritage Preservation and the National Park Foundation were also involved.
López Adobe, located at 1100 Pico Street in San Fernando, California, is one of the two oldest private residences in the San Fernando Valley. Built in 1882 by early settlers of the San Fernando Valley a short distance from the San Fernando Mission, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The Leonis Adobe is a historic adobe located in what is now Calabasas, California. One of the oldest surviving private residences in Los Angeles County and one of the oldest surviving buildings in the San Fernando Valley, it was built in 1844 and was occupied by the wealthy rancher Miguel Leonis until his death. Afterward, the property was the subject of a legal dispute between his common law wife Espiritu Chijulla, heirs, and a daughter born out of wedlock; the dispute lasted more than 15 years in the courts. In 1961, the adobe had fallen victim to vandalism, and its owner applied for a permit to raze the structure and erect a supermarket in its place. Preservationists succeeded in having the adobe declared Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #1 in 1962, saving it from the wrecking ball at the last minute. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
Rómulo Pico Adobe, also known as Ranchito Rómulo and Andrés Pico Adobe, was built in 1834 and is the oldest residence in the San Fernando Valley, making it the second oldest residence in Los Angeles. Built and owned by the Pico family of California, a prominent Californio family, the adobe is located in the Mission Hills section of the city and is a short distance from the San Fernando Mission. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
Located in Northeast Los Angeles near the Southwest Museum, the Ziegler Estate is a historic building on Figueroa Street in the Highland Park section of Los Angeles, California. Built in 1904, the building was designed by Charles Hornbeck and Alfred P. Wilson with elements of both Queen Anne and American Craftsman architecture. In the 1950s, Carl Dentzel, then director of the Southwest Museum, purchased it as a potential addition to the Southwest Museum Complex, which also included the Casa de Adobe and the Braun Research Library. The house was recently used as a day-care facility, which closed to allow for renovation.
Lummis Day is a signature community arts and music event in the neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles, showcasing the community's considerable pool of musicians, poets, artists, dancers and restaurants representing a kaleidoscope of ethnicities and cultural traditions. Since 2014, Occidental College's Institute for the Study of Los Angeles has partnered with the Lummis Day Community Foundation to support cultural programming.
Grace Nicholson was an American art collector and art dealer, specializing in Native American and Chinese handicrafts. The space she originally designed for her shop is now home to the USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California.
Eva Scott Fényes (1849-1930) was an American painter known for watercolor landscape of the American west. She was also known for her philanthropic activities.