Ex-Museum Head Gets Jail, to Pay Restitution in Thefts

The former director of the Southwest Museum received a short sentence and a tongue-lashing Friday in Superior Court for taking about 20 items from the museum collection and secretly selling or trading them.

Patrick Houlihan, who headed the museum specializing in American Indian art and artifacts from 1981 to 1987, was sentenced to serve 120 days in County Jail and ordered to pay $70,000 restitution. He was also directed to do 1,000 hours of community service and was put on five years probation.

When Houlihan was convicted on five counts of embezzlement and two counts of grand theft March 10, he became the most prominent U.S. museum official ever convicted for stealing from his own institution, according to officials at national museum associations. His lawyer said the verdict will be appealed.

In announcing the sentence, Judge J. Stephen Czuleger said he took into consideration the fact that most of Houlihan’s covert transactions, although illegal, were made to benefit the museum. Houlihan and others testified during the five-week trial that the trades and proceeds from the items sold mostly went toward enhancing the museum’s collection.

Despite that, a jury found him guilty of removing the items from the collection without authorization from the museum board.

Czuleger said Houlihan crossed the line into “felony hubris” when he kept $70,000 from the sale of one item, a 19th-Century Navajo poncho.

“You took the money and you put it in your pocket,” Czuleger said. “Your hubris is amazing.”

The judge was particularly disturbed that Houlihan had steadfastly denied any personal gain from the poncho transaction.

“You have done a lot of good things in your life,” Czuleger told Houlihan, who is widely credited for making vast improvements at the museum in Mt. Washington. “On the other hand, you never admitted that you screwed up.”

Houlihan showed no emotion as the judge lectured him. Afterward, he said he was disappointed that the judge had given him a jail sentence. As for the judge’s lecture on the poncho, Houlihan said: “He was wrong.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Alexis Gaza said she was also disappointed in the sentence, but for different reasons. “White-collar crime isn’t treated the same,” she said.

“If someone off the street was found guilty of stealing $70,000, they would go to state prison and not for just four months.”

The 20 items at issue in the case--including baskets, paintings and textiles--represent only a fraction of those that turned up missing in an inventory taken after Houlihan left the institution.