Indian Artifacts Missing From L.A. Museum; FBI Enters Investigation

The FBI confirmed Monday that it is investigating the disappearance of American Indian artifacts from the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles and the likelihood that the pieces were sold to private dealers and collectors.

Dealers in New Mexico, a center of trading in Indian artworks, said FBI agents have shown them photographs of blankets, pots, baskets and kachina dolls and said they were from the museum.

More than 25 objects were discovered to be missing six months ago during an inventory of the approximately 200,000 holdings of the museum, which is located on Mt. Washington and has a highly regarded collection of Indian art.

“We had had some staff changes here, and I was one of the new people,” said Jerome Selmer, who became executive director of the museum in March. “When new people come into a museum, they naturally want to do an inventory of the collection. We did, and that’s when we discovered we had a problem. We called in the FBI.”

Selmer said “a few more than 25 but not a huge number of items” were missing from a storage area, but would not say what was gone or estimate the value. He said a few items have been located by the FBI but were not yet back in the museum’s hands.

An FBI spokesman confirmed that the agency is investigating because stolen goods may have been moved between states, but he provided no other details.

Word of the investigation has spread through dealers in the Southwest who deal in American Indian art, which is growing in popularity--and price.

A dealer in Santa Fe, N.M., said he narrowly avoided buying a share of a stolen pot.

The dealer, Malcolm Grimmer, co-owner of the Morningstar Gallery, said it was confiscated by the FBI from a friend of his who had bought it for $24,000 about eight months ago.

“I almost was in on that deal,” Grimmer said. He wouldn’t name the friend but said, “He called me up (and) said he had a pot that he wanted me to purchase in a joint venture with him. I’m glad I didn’t do it.”

Grimmer said his friend showed him a photo and he thought the pot was a “major piece.” It is about 14 inches tall and probably made in the late 1800s, he said. Grimmer added that his friend had no idea it had been stolen and surrendered it to FBI agents who visited him.

“It had probably passed through several owners’ hands by the time he got it,” Grimmer said.

Another Santa Fe dealer, Joshua Baer, said FBI agents came to his gallery to show him photographs of blankets, pots and kachina dolls--a wooden doll representing a spirit. He had no information on their whereabouts, he said, but he confirmed that the pieces were of high quality.

Joe Carr, a dealer in Navajo textiles in Santa Fe, said an FBI agent two months ago showed him about a dozen photographs of blankets that he said were from the Southwest Museum collection.

Carr said two blankets appeared from photos to be rare and of exceptional quality. “One was a first-phase Ute style,” Carr said. “It’s one of the earliest examples of classic Navajo weaving that probably dates from about 1840.

“The other one . . . was a classic serape,” he added. “It had geometric patterns and hatched corners and undulating lines running through the center. It was beautiful.”

Carr estimated that those two pieces are worth between $125,000 and $150,000 each. Five years ago, they each would have fetched about $65,000, he said.

“The American Indian art business is in a state of very rapid and profound transition,” Baer said. “People who have been interested in American folk art and have overlooked Native American art for years now consider it well worth their time. Prices have gone up substantially.”

The director of one museum in the Southwest said dealers in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos, N.M., and Phoenix have been contacted by the FBI.

Patrick Houlihan, who was director of the Southwest Museum from 1981 until 1987, said Monday he has not been contacted about the missing items by the FBI or the museum. He said he thinks the pieces were accounted for in an inventory he oversaw in 1983.

“I think they were present in the building then,” said Houlihan, who is now the executive director of the Millicent Rogers Museum near Taos. He said, however, that he is not sure exactly which items are under investigation.

Stirling Huntly, who was the interim director of the museum until Selmer was hired, also said he had not been contacted by the FBI.

The Southwest Museum was founded in 1907 by historian and American Indian expert Charles Lummis. It moved to its present location on Mt. Washington in 1914. It operates on a $1.2-million annual budget and gets about 60,000 visitors a year.