Hall of Native Cultures Gets a Double Blessing : Exhibits: L.A. Museum of Natural History’s new collection fuses the ancient and the modern in a tribute to American Indians.

Last Monday--while the director, curator, consultants and guests stood in a circle--the new Times Mirror Hall of Native American Cultures was smudged with the smoke of burning sage.

It was not a typical gallery opening for the 80-year-old Los Angeles Museum of Natural History and, in actuality, a formal opening had been held four days earlier. But the joint Christian and traditional American Indian blessing was “an essential and proper opening,” according to curator Margaret Ann Hardin.

The ceremony was also a sort of rite of passage for the museum, marking the end of eight years of effort to put its extensive collection of American Indian art back on display. The exhibit includes 800 pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, most of which haven’t been shown since 1982.

Museum director Craig Black said he expects that 1.5 million people, including 500,000 schoolchildren, will visit the hall each year. Visitors enter the two-story, 10,000-square-foot exhibit off the Ancient Latin America area on the first floor of the museum.

There are essentially two parts to the exhibit: the history of indigenous peoples and the development of American Indian arts.

“Our Native American collection constitutes one of our most important archeological collections,” Hardin said.

The bulk of the purchases made for the hall were contemporary pieces, including some costumes, textiles and crafts that were made specifically for display.

The entire hall is a mix of recent works with their antique counterparts. In some places, the combination is subtle, reflecting continuing artistic traditions. In others, the pronounced differences illustrate the development of the craft.

Putting the collection together, Hardin said, the curators were “concerned about always having contemporary pieces, because we don’t want to portray Native American lives as something that is past, not present.”

The first section of the hall examines the lives and traditions of the 50,000 American Indians living in Los Angeles--the largest urban Indian population in the country. Ceremonial costumes and photographs fill the gallery.

“There was a decision that since we are in Los Angeles that we have a responsibility to . . . equally cover the story of the people in Los Angeles today,” Hardin said.

A video explains the social, political and cultural history of the groups indigenous to the Los Angeles Basin and the Indians who relocated here in the 1950s and ‘60s under the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Urban Relocation Plan.

Black said the hall reflects the full range of the city’s American Indian population. “This will show all the people of L.A. this diversity, and the contributions that Native Americans have made to our culture and our arts,” he said.

Toward the end of the exhibit is a gallery of contemporary American Indian art from the “Lost and Found Traditions Collection.” The 500 pieces made between 1965 and 1985--which were a gift from the American Federation of the Arts and funded by Primerica, formerly American Can Corp.--will be shown on a rotating basis.

In the center of the hall is a mock Pueblo dwelling that shows the structure of the buildings and the delicate Zuni gardens, where crops are planted in waffle-like squares in geometric patterns.

“Everybody I’ve talked to (who was Zuni) has a fond memory of the gardens,” Hardin said. “Everyone wanted to talk to us about it, and eventually a photograph surfaced.”

The rest of the exhibit reflects the particular strengths of the museum’s collection. There is an array of Pueblo pottery, some displayed with mannequins to show how they were used. A large offering of Navajo rugs shows the influence of Western designs and, more notably, buyers.

There are some rare artifacts in the hall as well. In the entryway--labeled “The Death of a Way of Life”--are replicas of Hugo Reid’s letters, originally published in the Los Angeles Star in the mid-19th Century, detailing the lives of Gabrielino and Fernandenos Indians. A Gabrielino gathering basket, the only one still known to exist, is displayed alone in a case.

“We display it that way because it makes a powerful statement: to be down to your last pie pan . . . for something that was in every household to be gone, wiped out,” Hardin said.

From Northern California, there is also decorative gift basket, which would have been used in ceremonial presentations, or as a goodwill offering. It dates back to the mid-1800s and is one of only three in the public domain.

Hardin said it is important to remember that the majority of the pieces in the hall were gifts from private collectors, so the assortment is biased by their interests.

The last exhibit in the hall demonstrates that point. It is a section of a Craftsman house where a female mannequin--modeled after Hardin herself--is posed with her basket collection.