Southwest Museum’s Ex-Director Indicted Over Missing Artifacts : Art: Three-year probe leads to 11 counts of theft and embezzlement. As many as 120 items valued at $3 million are involved.

The former director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles has been indicted by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury on 11 counts of theft and embezzlement in connection with an estimated $3 million worth of missing items, according to museum and law enforcement officials.

Patrick Houlihan, who was director from 1981 until 1987, was charged Tuesday after a three-year investigation by the FBI involving as many as 120 rare artifacts, according to Jerome Selmer, current director of the museum.

Neither the FBI nor the district attorney would comment on the case.

“Under our rules we cannot confirm an indictment by a grand jury until a suspect has been arrested and appears in court,” said Mike Botula, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.

Houlihan, who is now director of the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, N.M., said he is innocent of all charges. “I look forward to the open forum of the courts to set on the record for all to see the facts and my innocence,” he said in a statement released by the Millicent Rogers Museum.

He could not be reached directly.

In the statement, he said he believes the charges are a “smear campaign” by the board of the Southwest Museum because of his objections, when he was director there, to a proposed merger of that institution with the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

“I look forward to the opportunity to expose to the public the true abuses to that grand old institution and to prove my innocence,” he said in the statement.

The museum, located on Mt. Washington in northeast Los Angeles, houses one of the country’s best known collections of Indian art. Founded in 1907 by historian and Indian art expert Charles Lummis, it has about 60,000 visitors a year.

About 120 items were determined to be missing from the museum during audits in 1989 and 1990, Selmer said. Included on the missing list were rare textiles, including a Navajo poncho-style serape that was worth as much as $150,000, according to Joshua Baer, a Santa Fe, N.M., art dealer.

Also missing were baskets, dolls and paintings by such well known artists as Maynard Dixon.

Some of the missing items were recovered by the FBI, Selmer said, but they have not yet been returned to the museum. “We are not sure which ones they have,” he said, “but whatever it is we will be glad to get them back.” One source close to the investigation said that at least one art dealer testified before the grand jury that Houlihan had sold or traded him Indian pieces from the Southwest Museum collection on several occasions.

The dealer testified that Houlihan had said that the directors of the museum had approved the transactions, the source said.

In 1989 when the disappearance of the articles first came to light, the collection manager and registrar at the Southwest Museum said that no such transactions were approved.

“I was not aware of any Native American pieces that went out when I was there,” said Claudine Scoville, who was at the Southwest Museum from 1982 until 1987.