Southwest faces major repair job

Operators of the Southwest Museum say they will close its collections exhibition areas beginning June 30 to make way for at least 3 1/2 years of major repairs to the historic but bedraggled Mount Washington landmark, a move that has alarmed some long-time volunteers and neighbors who fear a permanent closure could follow.

But officials at the Autry National Center, which operates the Southwest, say the real message in the move is just the opposite. Not only will they keep the Southwest’s library and gift shop open, they say, they’re aiming to reopen the rehabilitated Southwest building with exhibition space in 2010, so long as they can raise enough donor money and get city approvals needed to expand their Griffith Park site.

Until then, “the collection has got to be moved out, because it’s imperiled where it is,” said John Gray, the Autry’s chief executive.

Gray declined to speak in depth, citing a mediation agreement with neighborhood groups and the mayor’s office aimed at avoiding negotiations via the media. But he did say Autry’s ambition is to get City Council approval and break ground on a 100,000-square-foot expansion in Griffith Park in 2007, to complete that project by 2009, move most of the Southwest Museum’s collections to the Autry’s Griffith Park complex, then complete renovation and reopen the Southwest with exhibition areas the following year.

On Friday night, leaders of the museum, the neighborhood coalition and a mayor’s representative will meet at City Hall. Then, “we’ll be learning things. The devil’s in the details,” said Nicole Possert, co-chair of the Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition and a board member of the Highland Park Heritage Trust.

Possert acknowledged that the Southwest building’s troubles are “a short-term issue -- renovation work that we all knew needed to happen.... The Autry National Center is being a steward for the building, doing this work, and they deserve significant credit.... But we’d be uncomfortable if that work were used as a pretense.”

The big question, she said, is whether the Autry will make Griffith Park additions at the expense of the Mount Washington site. The issue, Possert said, is “IMBY. We want the [museum] to be in our backyard.”

The Southwest, which was the first museum in Los Angeles, has stood at its bluff-top site since 1914, its 225,000 Native American and other artifacts ranked among the most valuable public collections in North America.

But the museum struggled with tight money and deteriorating facilities for years. In the year ended May 31, 2003, tax filings show, the museum raised less than half the money needed to cover its $1.4 million in costs.

The threat of closure led the Autry organization to step up with a merger plan that year. Since then, the merger has been a delicate effort, uniting an old, impoverished institution focused on Native American culture and a new, wealthy institution founded in 1988 by a singing screen cowboy, Gene Autry.

Autry officials say they’ve already spent more than $5 million shoring up the Southwest. Expenses ahead could reach $15 million, including replacing the roof and seismic work to reattach the Southwest’s signature tower -- which holds most of its artifacts -- to the rest of the building. Only a month ago, Gray said, rain penetrated building walls and stained a 105-year-old Osage shield of painted rawhide with eagle claws and feathers.

The Autry aims to raise that Southwest upgrade money, along with costs of adding to its Griffith Park campus, through a $150-million capital campaign now in its early “silent stage.”