Will Autry, Southwest Museums Join Forces?

A possible merger between the Southwest Museum and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage is being considered by a special committee of the Southwest Museum’s board of trustees, according to a confidential draft of the plan obtained by The Times. The report calls for the creation of a new National Center for Western Heritage, which would function as an umbrella for the two museums.

The proposal also calls for the construction of a new building for the Southwest Museum on the grounds of the Autry Museum, located in the northeast corner of Griffith Park.

The draft report cautions that the deal not be seen as a “takeover” of the Southwest by the Autry but as a “merger of equals.”

Duane King, director of the Southwest Museum, confirmed that a special board committee is studying the option.

“The Southwest Museum is willing to take a look at it and see what happens,” King said. “But I wouldn’t place any bets on any specific outcome.”

John Gray, executive director and chief executive of the Autry Museum, said that his board did not have a special committee established to explore the possibility of such a merger. But he acknowledged that informal discussions have taken place.

“It ebbs and flows,” Gray said of talks between the two museums. “We’ve had discussions for 10 years, but there is nothing specific.”

A revised version of the draft proposal is expected to be presented at the Southwest’s board meeting Monday.

The merger plan coincides with the October appointment of Santa Fe, N.M., businessman Michael Kammerer to the Southwest Museum board. A second document obtained by The Times shows that Kammerer, who was also appointed to the board of the Autry Museum last summer, recommended that the Southwest make the detailed written proposal to the Autry.

The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, founded in 1988 by entertainer and businessman Gene Autry, has struggled since its inception to develop credibility as more than a repository of Hollywood memorabilia, Western art and cowboy artifacts. Those efforts have accelerated in the past year. Citing the need “to increase the scope of its exhibitions and its scholarly work,” Autry’s widow, Jackie, who serves as board chairman, established a $100-million endowment for the museum last October. The gift came two weeks before Kammerer solicited the proposal from the Southwest Museum.

The Southwest Museum was founded in 1907 by Charles F. Lummis and is the oldest museum in Los Angeles. It was described in a recent accreditation report by the American Assn. of Museums as an “extremely valuable national cultural treasure.” The 350,000-piece collection of American Indian art, artifacts and other objects is widely regarded as one of the finest in the United States. It is the only major museum of American Indian art maintained by a private, non-government institution.

A Merger Plan Was Rejected 14 Years Ago

The confidential draft report calls for all functions of the two museums to be transferred to the newly created National Center for Western Heritage. Some of the Southwest’s collection of American Indian art would be exhibited at the Autry, as it has been in the past, but the Southwest would eventually have its own building as part of a proposed expansion of the Griffith Park complex. A new board would be constituted with equal representation from the two museums.

The report also proposes the formation of a center that would combine research assets of the two museums. The Southwest’s libraries include the world’s largest repository of material related to California Indian culture, while the Autry has been reorganizing research along the lines of a regional think tank. The combined research center would be housed in the Southwest Museum’s existing buildings in Mount Washington.

The draft proposal generally reiterates a merger plan that was considered--and rejected--14 years ago. In 1987, Southwest board members promoted an unsuccessful effort to unite the museum with the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

The 1987 plan called for the Southwest Museum’s collection to be moved from its historic site in Mount Washington to a new facility to be built in the San Fernando Valley. The Southwest’s existing buildings would have been refurbished as a research center.

Opposition to that plan came from a variety of community and neighborhood organizations that protested the loss of independence by the 80-year-old museum, the possible relocation of large segments of its collection to a satellite facility and the dilution of a major cultural facility in an area of the city with few such existing resources.

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre also asked the state attorney general’s office to investigate possible conflicts of interest concerning interlocking memberships on the boards of the two museums. The plan was scrapped.

The subsequent possibility of a merger with the Autry has been rumored ever since the Western heritage museum opened in 1988. Spokesmen for both museums publicly denied it over the years.

“They’re cowboys and we’re Indians,” Southwest board member James F. Dickason told The Times in 1990 about the prospect, “and the two don’t get along.”

Dickason, retired CEO of Newhall Land & Farming Co., is now leading the special committee of the Southwest’s board that is studying the merger. He could not be reached for comment on the current proposal. Kammerer, the joint trustee who recommended the written proposal for a merger, last year established a foundation in Santa Fe to “promote a set of common sense Western values” of individualism and personal responsibility, according to the foundation’s Web site. The Code of the West Foundation makes awards to “role models and heroes . . . whose lifestyles represent the ideals of the code.”

Code of the West Foundation Director JoAnn Balzer is also a trustee of the Southwest Museum. Kammerer’s wife, Kris, is on the board of the Autry.

The Southwest Museum, chronically underfunded in the past, has stabilized its finances during the last five years and plans to break ground this summer on a $3-million expansion and renovation of its facility. With 3,000 members, the museum has an annual operating budget of $1.6 million and an endowment of just under $5 million.

The Autry has 5,500 members and an annual operating budget of $12 million.

Gray, a former banker and a deputy in the U.S. Small Business Administration, was named executive director of the Autry Museum last year. King, director of the Southwest Museum since 1995, is former deputy director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.