Museum Showing Artifacts of Indians Opens at CSUN

The San Fernando Valley’s newest museum, which opened Wednesday at California State University, Northridge, features artifacts from local American Indian tribes but is the brainchild of a Lithuanian immigrant.

Visitors to the Anthropology Museum came and went during a two-hour reception, talking of Indian rock art and shell-bead necklaces. But museum director Liucija Baskauskas talked instead about the realization of a 12-year dream.

The purpose of the museum, she said, is to explain anthropology to the public in a simple, visual way. Through a series of rotating exhibits, videotapes and brief written descriptions that accompany each group of artifacts, Baskauskas hopes to show Valley residents what life here was like in centuries past.

African Exhibit Planned

Future exhibits will include an African show and a display that compares Peruvian and California-area Indian artifacts. Admission is free.

The 42-year-old anthropology professor said she has felt a strong affinity for American Indians since she arrived in the United States with her family in 1949 after leaving a World War II refugee camp.

Growing up in Massachusetts, “I read everything I could on Native Americans. I tried to model myself after their noble traits,” she said.

Baskauskas said she hopes the museum will become “a focal point of local archeology”--the study of ancient peoples. She, as an anthropologist, studies man’s cultural characteristics.

Comment on Culture

The museum’s inaugural exhibit focuses on the Chumash Indians, a Southern California tribe that lived in villages up and down the coast and numbered about 20,000.

Baskauskas believes many residents are unaware of the area’s ancient cultural heritage.

“I’m sick of hearing that the Valley has no culture,” Baskauskas said in an interview during the reception.

“People say that, if you do something cultural, no one will come, but that’s simply not true.”

Baskauskas majored in history at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, then moved west and earned a doctorate in cultural anthropology from UCLA in 1971. One year later, she accepted a teaching position at CSUN.

But it wasn’t until January that Baskauskas, who also chairs the university’s anthropology department, presented her museum idea to CSUN President James W. Cleary. Financing by the CSUN Foundation and CSUN Trust Fund was approved three months later, she said.

With a budget of just $17,000, Baskauskas set out to make her dream a reality. Most of the money was used to remodel two rooms in the Sierra South building to house the museum. Curator Mark Raab, who heads the university’s Center for Public Archeology, donated his time, as did many students and professors.

Display Items

The museum display includes shell and glass beads, utensils used to prepare food, and an eerie series of pictographs that depict Chumash rock drawings from caves in Ventura County. The museum also continuously runs three videotapes that explain the science of archeology, the archeological history of the Valley and the significance of the rock art displays.

Many of the artifacts were discovered in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Conejo valleys. Baskauskas said the museum may eventually expand to the as-yet-unbuilt North Campus if it receives enough public support and increased funding.

For now, though, the Anthropology Museum consists of 720 square feet in the two converted rooms. Its arrival swells the ranks of the handful of small and relatively unknown museums in the Valley area, such as the William S. Hart Cowboy Museum in Newhall, the San Fernando Valley Historical Society Museum and the Los Encinos State Historic Park Museum.

The Anthropology Museum is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tours can be accommodated if parties call ahead of time. Exhibits will change each semester.