Are They Pardners No More?

After several months of subtle cowboy-Indian skirmishing over access to the coveted collection of the Southwest Museum on Mount Washington, the cowboys are in retreat.

The prize in this rivalry is the chance to collaborate with the respected but meagerly funded Southwest Museum, which is looking for a partner to help improve its balance sheet and boost public exposure of its 350,000 western artifacts from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

In a genteel updating of the hostilities a century past, the principal contenders have been the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage and the Temecula Band of the Luiseno Mission Indians, also known as the Pechangas, who operate a casino resort on tribal land near Temecula, midway between Los Angeles and San Diego along Interstate 15.

Though the Southwest Museum’s executive director, Duane King, sought to stress that no final decisions have been made, Autry director John Gray said that his institution and the Southwest are no longer actively pursuing a courtship.

“We’re very disappointed that we’re not proceeding to create a larger entity for Los Angeles, and we still hope that there’s a role for the Autry with the Southwest Museum in the future,” Gray said.

“We pretty much know that they’re leaning toward the Pechanga tribe,” said Autry public relations director Jay Aldrich, noting that this is the first time in more than a decade that Autry officials haven’t considered a merger with the Southwest Museum as a live possibility.

The Pechangas, increasingly prosperous with revenues from a gambling operation that opened in 1995, entered the picture with a letter to Southwest officials last May. In November, Pechanga elders visited the museum, King said, and museum board members have made several visits to the Pechangas’ property.

The idea under exploration, King said, is that the Pechangas would build a museum and cultural center that would display items from the Southwest Museum’s collection, about 98% of which is in storage, unseen by visitors. The Southwest Museum “would provide artifacts on a rotating basis for exhibition, as well as assistance with educational programs and public programs. And in return [the Pechangas] would provide support for our efforts here in Los Angeles,” King said.

In large part, said King, the Southwest board members have faced the decision of “whether to remain independent or to become part of another museum. The Pechanga band ... has offered an alliance that would not change the governance or the function of the Southwest Museum.”

Efforts to reach a Pechanga Tribal Council spokesman were unsuccessful Thursday and Friday.

Since 1914, the Southwest Museum has stood on a hill in the city’s largely residential Mount Washington neighborhood. Its holdings have been called the most significant of their kind in a nongovernmental museum.

But its out-of-the-way location and modest finances (its annual attendance is roughly 75,000; its fiscal 2001 budget of $2.3 million included no acquisition funds and its endowment is less than $5 million) have led to rumors of alliances with wealthier organizations. From 1998 to 2000, the museum operated a satellite exhibition area at the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art’s LACMA West building on Wilshire Boulevard

King said the museum is committed to its current site and, in a $3-million expansion campaign that is separate from the alliance discussions, it plans to open a third building at its Mount Washington site in mid-2003.

While the board and staffers have been in discussions with the Pechangas, he said, “I don’t want to create the impression that we have ruled out the Autry. We have not ruled out the possibility of any alliance with anyone.”

Early last year, Southwest officials had drafted a plan for how an Autry-Southwest merger might be achieved. Under that plan, the institutions could have created a National Center for Western Heritage to function as an umbrella organization, with a new building to rise near the current Autry site.

Like the Southwest Museum, the Autry collects and displays artifacts of western heritage. But the Autry museum (its 2001 budget was $12.5 million and its endowment tops $100 million), created with funding from the famous singing cowboy and his wife, Jackie Autry, also collects and displays show-business memorabilia illustrating the pop-culture image of the Old West. The museum in Griffith Park drew 320,000 visitors last year, but it has carried a lightweight reputation among academics.

Gray said Friday that the museum is committed to expanding its scholarly programs and stressing inclusiveness, and cited the Autry’s “Native Voices” program, which encourages Native American playwrights, and an ongoing project on the literary west in which the Autry has partnered with Otis and Occidental colleges.

For the Pechangas, a museum would be part of a broader plan to diversify the tribal economy and celebrate their heritage. This summer, the Pechangas are scheduled to open a 522-room hotel with seven restaurants, 75,000 feet of casino space, adding to an entertainment center that already includes gambling, restaurants, a concert and prizefight venue.

In May 2001, the Pechangas bought a 724-acre ranch (once the retreat of “Perry Mason” author Erle Stanley Gardner) that neighbors their casino. Though any major decision would need the approval of the Pechangas’ 1,200 tribal members, the Southwest Museum’s King said a portion of that land is under discussion as a possible museum site. “It’s just a beautiful site,” King said. “One way or another, they’re going to do a museum. And I think it’s going to be an excellent facility.”