Southwest Museum to Close Satellite

The Southwest Museum is shutting down its Wilshire Boulevard satellite and gearing up for a $3-million expansion and renovation of its historic facility in Mount Washington. Since June 1998, the museum has leased space from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in the building known as LACMA West, while raising funds to enlarge and upgrade its woefully inadequate headquarters. With most of the money in hand now, the Southwest will close the outpost on Jan. 2.

“Our experience at LACMA West has been very positive,” says Duane King, director of the Southwest Museum. “It has brought many people to our exhibitions, broadened our audience and increased our membership.” Most important, he says, the venture has boosted public appreciation of the museum’s collection of Native American art, which is second only to that of the Smithsonian Institution.

That recognition has helped the museum line up support for its long-term goals, King says. Plans call for a two-story, 9,500-square-foot building that will wrap around part of the parking lot near the top of the hillside site. The facility will be devoted to compact, open storage of the 350,000-piece collection, accessible to the public, scholars and school groups.

The L.A. County Museum of Art will use the vacated space at LACMA West for temporary exhibitions, says Keith McKeown, vice president of communications and marketing at LACMA. The space formerly used for special exhibitions in that building has been converted to galleries and a study center for Latin American art, scheduled to open on Thursday.

Valuable as the Southwest’s satellite has been, it was never meant to be a permanent venue, King says. And even though the museum’s fortunes are improving, it can’t afford to maintain the satellite while building the much-needed new facility. Running on an annual budget of $1.6 million, the museum has pulled itself out of debt and operated in the black for the last five years, but resources must be carefully marshaled, he says.

The Southwest took a three-year lease on the 8,200-square-foot space at LACMA West in June 1998 and launched the satellite four months later with an exhibition of Pueblo and Navajo textiles. The satellite is closing a few months before the lease runs out so the Southwest staff can proceed with expansion plans, King says. Terms of the lease have not be disclosed, but officials of both museums describe the arrangement as a mutually beneficial partnership and say that the Southwest Museum has paid just enough to cover LACMA’s costs.

Fund-raising for the expansion and renovation project got rolling with money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, made available after the museum suffered damage in the 1994 earthquake, King says. FEMA has provided $670,000 for new construction and $437,000 for renovation of the tower. In addition, the museum has received $750,000 from the Norman Sprague and Mildred E. and Harvey S. Mudd foundations, $500,000 from the W.M. Keck Foundation, $300,000 from the Weingart Foundation and $200,000 from the Parsons Foundation.

“If we didn’t raise another penny, we could still do the project,” King says. But he plans to do “in-house fund-raising” and pursue other foundations to ensure that all the finishing touches are funded.

The Southwest Museum, which was founded in 1907 and has occupied its landmark site in Mount Washington since 1914, has struggled for survival during the last 15 years. Operating in an antiquated complex, where valuable artworks are stored in a crumbling tower with no air-conditioning, officials have considered merging the chronically underfunded institution with the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County and moving to various other locations as well as expanding and improving the historic facility.

But the museum finally seems to be on an upswing. Last month the American Assn. of Museums reaccredited the Southwest after a thorough evaluation of its operations, governance, finances, staff, facilities and programs. The association’s report concluded that the museum is an “extremely valuable national cultural treasure at the verge of a new era.” Although the Southwest must carry out planned improvements to gain “its rightful place among the top anthropological institutions in the country,” the leadership is set “to make it happen,” the report states.

The design of the new structure is a “21st century version of the Mission Revival style chosen for the original building in 1912,” King says. Although the architect hasn’t been named, construction is expected to begin in a few months. The new facility will be up and running by June 2003, when the Southwest Museum station of the expanded Blue Line light-rail system is scheduled to open, he says. In his view, the station is crucial to the museum’s future because it will alleviate parking problems and provide easy access for the public.

After five years on the job, King says he is greatly encouraged about recent developments, but much remains to be done. While perusing the site of the new building, he says it’s time to start working on a master plan for the future.

Shepherding the museum is a bit like “taking a car trip at night,” he says. “You can’t see beyond the headlights, but you know there’s a long journey ahead.”