Southwest Museum President Steps Down

Amid continuing uncertainty over the financial future of the Southwest Museum in Mount Washington, the museum’s board president, Dr. Norman Sprague, stepped down earlier this week.

At the board’s annual meeting, Sprague turned over the presidency of the museum’s 33-member board to Wells Fargo Bank director James Dickason, a member of the board for 24 years.

Five new board members were also announced at the meeting. Among them were John Gavin, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and John Grundhofer, executive vice president and senior executive officer of Wells Fargo.

Sprague, president of the museum board since 1981, came under fire last year for pushing a plan to merge the institution, which specializes in Native American artifacts, with the County Museum of Natural History. The merger talks were prompted by the inability of the museum’s $4-million endowment to cover its growing costs.

But the merger negotiations were placed on hold when board members accused Sprague of acting on his own and Los Angeles city Councilman Richard Alatorre raised questions about a possible conflict of interest. Alatorre asked state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp to investigate the relationship between Sprague and his daughter, Caryll Mingst, who is also on the Southwest Museum board, and his son-in-law, William Mingst, a county museum board member. When the merger talks were put on hold, the attorney general’s office dropped the inquiry.

Sprague said that his decision to resign was not related to the conflict of interest charges or the merger talks. “I still think that if it (the merger) had worked out as we were discussing it, it might have been the answer to our problems,” he said.

The new president said he will not consider a merger. “The merger talks are gone forever,” Dickason said after the meeting. “We are committed to independence, but in order to stay afloat we have to be financially independent. Everything depends on that.”