News » NELA Culture » Southwest Museum » from: http://latimes.com: President of the Autry museums to retire

Autry Center President John L. Gray to retire

During his tenure, he oversaw the Western history center's transformation, including its merger with the Southwest Museum.

John L. Gray said the center's collection of Western cultural materials initially attracted him. (Los Angeles Times

By Suzanne Muchnic

March 8, 2010 | 8:45 p.m.

John L. Gray, who transformed a museum devoted to the legacy of film and recording star Gene Autry into an intercultural history center with a broad view of the term "Westerner," will announce his retirement Tuesday as president of the Autry National Center of the American West.

Opened in 1988 as the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, the institution evolved over Gray's 11-year tenure into the Museum of the American West and merged with the Southwest Museum of the American Indian in 2003.

The Autry National Center was formed in 2004 as an administrative umbrella over the two museums and a research center, the Institute for the Study of the American West.

With a single board of trustees, multiple sites and a collection of more than 450,000 objects, the Autry aims to appeal to a broad audience through such exhibitions as "Home Lands: How Women Made the West," opening April 16.

"John has done a tremendous job," said Steven S. Koblik, president of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. "He has fundamentally established a major new museum in Los Angeles, dedicated to understanding the American West in all of its complexity from the 18th and 19th century past to the 21st century present."

Gray, 61, a former administrator of the Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C., and First Interstate Bank in Denver and Los Angeles, said he was initially attracted to the Autry by its collection of Western cultural materials.

"The museum had the potential to look at people's identity, how they could see themselves as Westerners and to help them learn through history," he said. "Understanding the past helps us make better choices for the future."

Gray's tenure was often fraught with conflict about the Southwest Museum, which joined forces with the Autry after a long struggle to support itself.

The merger sparked bitter resentment among a community group that feared the Autry would seize the Southwest's collection and abandon its building on Mt. Washington.

The Autry -- with a $14-million annual operating budget and a $100-million endowment -- has overseen an extensive effort to conserve the Southwest's collection and invested about $7.5 million in renovating its badly neglected building.

But a $175-million expansion plan including exhibition space for the collection in Griffith Park was dropped last year when opponents demanded that the Autry make a legally binding commitment to maintain the Southwest's historic building as a fully functioning museum. Plans call for redesigning the Autry's existing facility to expand the exhibition space.

"My largest challenge was dealing with people who didn't understand the role of the museum and didn't appreciate it," Gray said. "As a result, the process of saving the Southwest and working on expansion plans never were discussed in terms of cultural institutions. It simply became politics."

But he views the merger as a success. "The most exciting part and the part in which I take the greatest comfort is having an intellectual framework and context for the Autry, which is to tell inclusive stories from the perspective of the people who were in them," he said.

Gray said it is good time for him to retire.

"The Autry is very stable financially," he said. "We have an extraordinary exhibition program funded for the next four years that will present the Native American and historic collections in inspirational and complicated ways."

Gray will continue in his position until the end of the year or until his successor is appointed.

calendar@latimes.com

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HIGHLAND PARK HERITAGE TRUST'S RESPONSE TO THE LA TIMES ARTICLES:

We would like to respond to the Los Angeles Times article dated March 9, 2010 entitled, "Autry Center President John L. Gray to retire" by Suzanne Muchnic.

Our organization has been concerned about the fate of the Casa de Adobe and the Southwest Museum as well as both of their collections and the 12+ acres of property. It has always been our hope that the Autry National Center would revive the Southwest Museum and share in the great history and pride that the Northeast Los Angeles communities have in their museum. There are many other people from all parts of Los Angeles and outside Los Angeles that have fond memories of the original Southwest Museum location.

We admire the unique Pre-Columbian tunnel and miss the exquisite dioramas of the native people that are no longer in place. Due to the length of material of the attachments that I am including to the LA Times, we will be posting the two documents that complete this response at http://www.hpht. org for the communities to read. Please read the attached letter from the Highland Park Heritage Trust, also, the memo from Autry dated September 2007 and the Southwest Museum Letter from Autry National Center, dated January 14, 2003, to Charles J. Fisher and Anne Marie Wozniak, both board members of the Highland Park Heritage Trust.

Thank-you.

Highland Park Heritage Trust
Tina Gulotta-Miller, Secretary, Highland Park Heritage Trust
www.hpht.org

John L. Gray leaves a clouded legacy as President of Autry National Center. When the Autry acquired the Southwest Museum and its unequalled collection of native American and Southwestern art and artifacts, Mr. Gray made a written commitment to preserve, protect and re-open Los Angeles' first museum - the brainchild of environmental visionary Charles Fletcher Lummis and architectural visionaries Silas Burns and Sumner P. Hunt. At present there has been little more than an appropriation of the Southwest Museum's holdings by the Autry.

The collection includes early Spanish and Mexican American artifacts, Fremont's Flag when California became a state, Charles Fletcher Lummis - history and the arts and culture of the early 1900's in America and California. There are paintings by Maynard Dixon and Eva Feynes -watercolors of the Spanish Missions. Lummis is responsible for the enormous collection that Autry National Center now has claims to.

It is the vastness of cultures that make this collection prestigious and museum worthy. The current collection is worth approximately one billion dollars in today's market, but to our community it is priceless.

Mr. Gray's ongoing obfuscations of the Autry's intentions and his actions (and non-actions) have harmed Los Angeles in general and Northeast Los Angeles in particular. That is why Highland Park Heritage Trust and Friends of the Southwest Museum Coalition (HPHT is a founding member) and many other organizations have banded together to seek to avoid the same horrific predatory looting that befell the incomparable collections and irreplaceable site of the historic Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania. The Los Angeles Times owes its readers more than a public relations puff piece when so much is at stake.

The Highland Park Heritage Trust is an all-volunteer, non-profit community organization, and we strive to preserve and promote the historic character of Highland Park, Garvanza, Mt. Washington, Hermon, Montecito Heights and Cypress Park, which are all located in the Northeast Los Angeles area, and educate the public about the historic and cultural significance of their respective neighborhoods.

Respectfully,

Highland Park Heritage Trust
Tina Gulotta-Miller, Secretary, Highland Park Heritage Trust
Co-Chair of the Garvanza Improvement Association
Member of the Friends of the Southwest Museum
Garvanza Resident of the Greater Highland Park Community

Attachments: please go to http://www.hpht. org to view

1) Memo from Autry National Center, September 2007
2) Southwest Museum - Autry National Center Letter To Members dated: 01-14-2003

cc: Office of the Attorney General, Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Councilman Jose Huizar, CD14
Councilman Ed P. Reyes, CD1

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from: http://latimes.com: President of the Autry museums to retire - Southwest Museum - News

Autry Center President John L. Gray to retire

During his tenure, he oversaw the Western history center's transformation, including its merger with the Southwest Museum.