Boycott of Autry Museum Is Planned

Declaring that “Indians are not for sale,” the Minnesota-based American Indian Movement will issue a blistering resolution today calling for a boycott of Griffith Park’s Autry Museum of Western Heritage.

The Autry is considering the establishment of a National Center for Western Heritage that would entail a merger with the Southwest Museum, located in Mount Washington. The Southwest houses one of the nation’s premier collections of Plains, Southwest and California Indian art, numbering more than 300,000 objects.

In the resolution, AIM spokesman Vernon Bellecourt describes the 13-year-old Autry Museum, founded by the late cowboy entertainer and businessman Gene Autry, as “a bastion of B-movie junk” that has “promoted the insidious, racist stereotyping of American Indians.”

The resolution claims that the Autry is coordinating a takeover of the Southwest to raise the Autry’s profile, boost attendance and gain credibility in the academic and museum communities.

“It’s important that [Indians] promote our own culture, our own heritage,” said Bellecourt, by telephone from Minneapolis. “It’s important not to let the Southwest be annexed to a cowboy museum. We hope the Autry will back off.”

John L. Gray, executive director and CEO of the Autry Museum, was unaware of the planned boycott. He disputed the allegation of an attempted takeover.

“It would be an alliance, not a takeover,” Gray said. Discussions between the two museums are continuing, he said, “but we’re a long way from having anything definitive. If there is dissonance on the part of either [museum’s] staff or board or audience, we wouldn’t proceed.”

Southwest Museum director Duane King, reached by telephone at a research seminar on the East Coast, also described the discussions as concerning a strategic alliance, not a takeover.

King said, “I can understand [Bellecourt’s] feelings. Indian history has mostly been portrayed through the eyes of others.” But King also said any decision on an alliance with the Autry would be based on its own merits.

News of the possible merger surfaced in March, when The Times obtained a draft proposal calling for the creation of a new National Center for Western Heritage that would function as an umbrella for the two museums. Jackie Autry, widow of the founder and chairman of the Autry Museum’s board, established a $100-million endowment for the museum last October, citing the need “to increase the scope of its exhibitions and its scholarly work.”

The merger proposal also calls for the construction of a new building for the Southwest on the Autry’s grounds, in the northeast corner of Griffith Park. The Autry holds a 50-year lease on the 2 1/2-acre parcel of public parkland, for which it pays the city $1 per year.

Stating that Indians are “the first protectors of Mother Earth,” the AIM resolution also supports the Griffith Park section of the local chapter of the Sierra Club, which issued a statement in March opposing construction of any new buildings in the park. The Sierra Club, the Los Feliz Improvement Assn., the Friends of Griffith Park and the city’s Parks and Recreation Department had originally opposed locating the Autry Museum in the park. Without discussion, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved the site in 1986.

Local AIM representatives plan to circulate copies of the resolution outside the Autry, together with a petition asking California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to investigate whether contributions to City Council members were inappropriately made by Gene Autry or members of the museum board between 1984 and 1988.

The draft proposal outlining a merger between the two museums generally reiterates an earlier plan to unite the Southwest Museum with the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, which was rejected in 1987 following vigorous opposition from community and neighborhood organizations and the office of former City Councilman Richard Alatorre.