Southwest’s safe now, but can it be made great?

A certain relief accompanies Wednesday’s news that the Southwest Museum will merge with the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. But it’s relief that must be tempered with caution.

For decades, the Southwest has struggled in a slow-motion effort to keep its head above water amid a rising tide of real and potential disaster for its great collection of Native American art and artifacts. Inadequate display and storage facilities, employee theft from the collection, shoddy record-keeping, daunting conservation needs, a chronic lack of funding and an incompetent board were among the Himalayan-size hurdles faced by L.A.’s oldest museum.

The Northridge earthquake didn’t help either. The temblor created expensive seismic problems for the Southwest’s landmark 1914 building at the edge of Mount Washington, an issue that remains unresolved.

The holdings of the Southwest, founded in 1907, occupy a top tier nationally, with hundreds of thousands of baskets, blankets and other culturally important items, which date from the 18th to the 20th century. As executive director Duane King once put it, the Southwest is a great collection, but it has never been a great museum. Now, with money from the wealthy Autry -- endowment: $100 million -- it might have a chance.

Under existing management, the Southwest had no chance. A shocking draft of a confidential study commissioned by the museum last year and obtained recently by The Times paints a blistering picture of ineffectual, disengaged trustees whose fiscal oversight has been “well out of the mainstream of how other museums conduct their financial affairs.” The board, except for a few unidentified members, is further described as unwilling “to provide their own financial commitment to the museum.”

The report was compiled by attorney Daniel N. Belin, former board president of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and funded by a $60,000 grant from the Getty Trust. The draft shows how the negative reputation of the Southwest’s board made it even harder to find a partnership solution for its escalating crisis. Potential suitors, including the Huntington Library in San Marino and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, expressed huge enthusiasm for the collection, but they would only consider options if the Southwest and its board were dissolved.

Even the eager Autry made no secret of its skepticism. The draft report says it proposed creation of a special umbrella committee to oversee financial operations of any joint venture -- with four members appointed by the Southwest and five by the Autry, assuring its control. The numbers shifted further in this week’s merger announcement to three from the Southwest and six to nine from the Autry.

“Without question,” the draft bluntly declares, “the Southwest Museum’s board of trustees has lost credibility in the community.” One might reasonably ask how such a board might then be entrusted to make a credible decision to partner with any institution, including the Autry.

I’ve made no secret in the past of my reservations about the Griffith Park museum as a partner for the Southwest. Welcome, positive efforts have been made to broaden the scope of its conception of “the West” and elevate the seriousness of its programs, such as its April merger with a Denver-based research project that studies women in the West. But its record is both modest and young. Merger with the Southwest instantly gives the Autry a stellar collection, but there is still a long row to hoe.

First, the Autry must find ways to erase its patronizing image among many Native Americans. L.A. is home to the largest urban Indian population in the nation, some of whom derisively refer to the late singing cowboy’s museum as “the fort.” When partnership talks collapsed last fall between the Southwest and the Pechanga band of Luiseno Indians, an unprecedented opportunity was lost for Native Americans to become major philanthropic caretakers of their own patrimony. The Autry needs to rekindle that flame.

Second, the Southwest currently occupies an aging but historic site -- a place where, for example, Jackson Pollock hung out as a 19-year-old aspiring artist, wandering over from his house on nearby Montecito Drive in 1931. It cannot be abandoned. Soon there will be a Gold Line Metro stop at its front door, so maximizing its incredible public potential is essential.

Finally, any plan to build an exhibition center for the Southwest adjacent to the Autry faces big obstacles. Earlier building projects at the site have drawn fire from neighbors and the Sierra Club. However those public land-use issues are resolved, anything less than architecture whose quality matches the greatness of the Southwest’s collection would be an affront. The Autry’s phony Mission-style building is theme-park design of the worst sort. Putting up another glorified Taco Bell would only add insult to injury.

So the news is decidedly mixed. A great collection now seems secure, but a great museum is still a long way off.