Pechangas Delay Pact With L.A. Museum

The Pechanga Indians of Temecula on Sunday hesitated on the brink of a pioneering deal to provide up to $1.3 million yearly to the cash-strapped Southwest Museum in exchange for the loan of thousands of artifacts.

That decision represents the first setback for a museum building plan that was assembled over a year of negotiations between tribal leaders and museum officials, an alliance that museum authorities say would be the first of its kind. The proposed contract, which was approved Friday by Southwest Museum trustees, is intended as the initial step in a plan to build a Pechanga museum and cultural center near the tribe’s casino.

“The general membership wants more information,” tribal spokesman Butch Murphy said Sunday. The concept might need “another approach” and until then, “we’re in a holding pattern,” he said.

Michael Heumann, president of the Southwest Museum’s board of trustees, called the decision “understandable. We spent lots of time getting comfortable with this agreement, and they should have a chance to do the same,” he said.

Sources close to the talks said the 20-year loan agreement would allow the Pechangas to build a museum larger than the Southwest’s, the most important museum showcase for Indian art and artifacts west of the Mississippi River.

The Pechangas would pay the museum $750,000 yearly until completion of the new museum’s opening--an estimated five-year project--and $1.3 million annually after that.

About 200 tribal members were at the meeting, which included about three hours of discussion, Murphy said. He said he was unsure when the proposal would be revisited.

Leaders at the Southwest, whose budget last year was $2.3 million, welcomed the deal as a chance to free the 95-year-old institution from chronic funding shortages and find a wider audience for its 350,000-piece collection, about 98% of which is in storage.

Though some Southwest supporters warned that the proposal could undercut the museum’s control of its collection, trustees approved it on a 15-1 vote, with one abstention and eight trustees absent.

Pechanga leaders, who have run a prosperous casino since 1995, have described the proposal as a chance to celebrate their heritage--and bolster their reservation’s list of visitor attractions.

But after questions persisted at Sunday’s meeting, leaders decided to table the proposal.

“I don’t see it as a problem. We’re under no firm deadline,” said Duane King, executive director of the Southwest Museum. “I think that they simply want to make sure that they can afford this, given all of the other things they’re doing.”

Next month, the tribe will open a hotel-casino at an estimated cost of $270 million. Pechanga leaders haven’t made any public estimates yet on the cost of building the museum.

In previous votes, the Pechanga membership has approved the concept of building a museum and the idea of approaching the Southwest Museum about a collaboration.

Sources said the proposed contract between the museum and tribe leaves unspecified the number of artifacts the Pechangas might borrow, but acknowledges that prior agreements with donors will keep many pieces from ever leaving the Southwest Museum.

The Southwest Museum, headquartered in Mount Washington, is the oldest museum in Los Angeles and its collection of Native American artifacts from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries is considered the largest of its kind outside a government institution.