SOUTHWEST MUSEUM ON A ROLL

Breaking into a heartfelt “Hallelujah!,” Southwest Museum Director Patrick T. Houlihan reacted to an abundance of good fortune to recently befall the Highland Park institution.

Within the last month, the Southwest has been accredited by the American Assn. of Museums, was notified of $1.3 million in new grants, and learned that attempts to host a major exhibit of Canadian Indian art were successful.

Accreditation by the Washington-based association “is a recognition by the museum profession that the care and use of the Southwest’s collections meet a national standard,” Houlihan said.

All aspects of the museum were evaluated to receive the accreditation, said Southwest public relations coordinator Carol Selkin. Everything from administrative structure to safety codes was examined, including care and exhibition of collections, educational services, and fire and earthquake precautions.

Edward H. Able Jr., association executive director, said the accreditation process was a voluntary one. “We wouldn’t have given the Southwest museum accreditation” if it had not met association standards. “I wouldn’t call it an honor; it’s a level of professional achievement.”

About 700 museums of about 6,200 nationwide receive association accreditation, Able said.

The Southwest, devoted primarily to art and artifacts of North American Indians, was also recently awarded a $500,000 challenge grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Houlihan said the money will be used toward an $8 million endowment campaign to fund staff salaries and curatorial positions. The grant must be matched 3-to-1; however, part of it has already been matched with an $800,000 gift from the Ahmanson Foundation.

(UCLA’s Museum of Cultural History also received a $260,000 endowment challenge grant that it will use to acquire equipment for a new research library.)

Finally, an exhibition of Canadian Indian art will be shown for the first time in the United States at the Southwest Museum beginning mid-February.

“The Legacy,” designed and organized by the British Columbia Provincial Museum in Victoria, Canada, features art and artifacts representing about 80% of the major Indian tribes on the Northwest coast of Canada, Houlihan said.

The exhibit explores the evolution of Northwest Coast art through time with both traditional and contemporary works. More than 100 pieces include wood and metal work, ceremonial masks, graphics, jewelry and basketry.

Several art works on view in the County Museum of Art’s new Robert O. Anderson Building are recent acquisitions. Some of the works, all of which augment the museum’s permanent 20th-Century art collection, are:

“Cronos,” by American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, a 1947 bronze work and the first major work by the artist to enter the museum’s collection; “Untitled,” a 16-foot florescent tower made this year by Dan Flavin, who has pioneered the medium of florescent and neon light sculpture; “The Port,” a pre-World War I oil on canvas of an ocean liner by Felix Delmarle, an artist working in France who bridged Cubism and Futurism.

Also, “Red-Blue Chair,” a 1918 work that exploits Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld’s use of angles and primary colors; “Jazz,” Henri Matisse’s suite of 20 exuberant stencil prints with accompanying text published in Paris in 1947; “Retrospective Column, Part One,” by Robert Graham, a 16-foot-high cast-bronze sculpture made in 1981 that contains the images the artist has used in his sculpture during the past 15 years.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city lately hospitable to homes for modern art. Korea recently opened a National Museum of Modern Art, which boasts an outdoor sculpture area and rooftop exhibit space.

The museum, located outside Korea’s capital in Seoul Grand Park, was designed by American-based architect Kim Tae-Su and built in about two years for about $21 million. It was dedicated in August, and was previously housed in smaller quarters in the downtown Seoul Toksugung Palace. The collection began in 1969.

According to a November edition of Seoul magazine, two main functions of the museum are “to introduce modern Korean art to foreigners and to introduce foreign art works to Koreans.”

An in-depth examination of Chicano Art as a national movement will be the subject of a major exhibition at UCLA’s Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery in 1989, gallery director Edith A. Tonelli announced recently.

The exhibit and related educational events will explore the Chicano art movement from 1965 to the 1980s as a national phenomenon with identifiable characteristics, Tonelli said. It will expand an understanding of cultural works and related historical circumstances unique to Chicano communities in the United States.

“Until now, Chicano art has only been examined as a local or regional phenomenon through small exhibitions and symposia which have addressed the art of certain states and regions,” Tonelli said in a prepared statement.

“What has been lacking in these regional exhibitions,” Tonelli continued, “is the attempt to define the Chicano art movement on a national level, in broad cultural and historical terms. The Chicano art movement of the 1960s and ‘70s has emerged as the most pervasive and influential expression within a long history of Mexican-American culture.”

A panel of 23 scholars, curators and artists from across the country recently participated in a two-day planning session at UCLA to discuss the structure and content of the coming exhibition.