Southwest Museum Considers 2nd Facility

Seeking to attract new audiences, the Southwest Museum has announced plans to assess the feasibility of opening a second facility in the city of Palm Desert in Riverside County.

The decision does not affect Southwest’s search for a new location for its primary museum, Executive Director Thomas Wilson said. Several Ventura County cities have expressed interest in wooing the Southwest Museum, including Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Fillmore, Moorpark and Camarillo.

“Unlike an art museum, we have the ability to create a second facility without any diminution of quality whatsoever,” Wilson said.

Because the museum’s present headquarters in Highland Park are so cramped, only a fraction of the collection is on display. The Southwest Museum has 12,000 pots, but visitors can look at just 50, Wilson said. Similarly, only a few dozen of museum’s thousands of Navajo textile samples are on view.

A sister facility in Palm Desert would allow the Southwest Museum to take more of its collection out of storage. Along with standard exhibits of American Indian artifacts, the museum might host music and dance performances, powwows and educational programs by local Indian groups.

The Palm Desert City Council this week voted to spend $50,000 on feasibility studies for the new museum, and local corporations contributed a matching sum, Wilson said.

Detailed proposals from cities interested in having the primary Southwest Museum are due Nov. 30.