Tag Archives: Autry

Autry Revisited

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Autry Museum of the American West
Griffith Park
April 30, 2016

We took Margaret to the Autry Museum in Griffith Park, one of our favorite museums. Its large collection explores the history and image of the American West from several perspectives. Downstairs, where we spent most of our time today, is devoted to the historical West. Several exhibits have been revamped since we last explored that section. We thought the Cowboy Gallery — a display about the cattle industry and cowboys — was particularly well done, and the full size chuck wagon displayed in that gallery was interesting to look at. Farther on in the historical section, Margaret enjoyed seeing both the well restored stagecoach and also the bison display.

We went on from the historical section to the movie section. This gallery has artifacts from Western movies and movie stars, all the way from the silent era to the present. We enjoyed seeing the short video with clips of singing cowboys, including Gene Autry of course. There is a larger video screen at one entrance to the gallery. Today it was showing a loop of clips from Autry movies, which Margaret very much enjoyed.

Autry_4302016

Upstairs there is a large gallery devoted to Western themed art. We did not spend a lot of time in it today, but we did make a point of seeing a special exhibition we had read about, California Impressionism: The Gardena High School Collection. From 1919 through 1956, the senior classes at Gardena High School each bought a work of art to donate to the school. The students made selecting the works a class project. In the process they acquired some very good works by artists who were young and upcoming at the time, many of whom are well-regarded now.

We ate lunch at the museum café, which serves excellent food. The menu is simple – burgers, sandwiches, salads, and several hot dishes. Margaret was in the mood for something Mexican, so she ordered the chicken street tacos, which Meredith had as well. Bob enjoyed the chili and half sandwich combo, and we all enjoyed the order of cornbread we shared. Prices are quite reasonable for a museum café.

The Autry is perhaps the most accessible museum for wheelchair patrons of all the places that we have visited. There are no interior doors separating galleries, which can be awkward at other museums, and it offers an impressive number of handicap parking spaces.

Adult admission is $10; there are discounts for seniors, students, and children. Active duty military get in free. The museum participates in the Bank of America Museums on Us program and also offers a discount to AAA members. Parking is free.

After the visit we took Margaret back to her board and care residence. Meredith’s sister Kathleen met us there, and the four of us sat outside in the garden for a while, visiting and catching up. It is increasingly difficult for Margaret to make the transfers from wheelchair to car and back, so we are trying to make just one stop when we go out, rather than multiple stops for lunch or coffee separate from the museum or other outing.

Southwest Museum

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Southwest Museum
Mount Washington
January 16, 2016

Margaret’s passion is Native American culture, and one of her favorite museums back when she used to live in Los Angeles years ago was the Southwest Museum. The location is farther from Margaret’s home than we usually go, but she had mentioned it several times and clearly wanted to see it, so we made it our destination for this visit.

SW_tower&trees

Over the course of the 20th century, the Southwest accumulated the second largest collection of Native American artifacts in the country. Established in 1907, it moved to its beautiful hilltop site above Highland Park in 1914. Unfortunately, the museum fell on hard times. It lacked the financial resources to maintain its collection and aging building alone and merged with the Autry Museum in 2003. There has been controversy over that merger, but we reserve judgment. The critics probably do not understand, or do not care about, the expense involved in preserving the collection and restoring the building. One wonders, how many of them contribute financially to either effort?

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has set up a website Treasure It Together, devoted to the Southwest Museum building and site, to disseminate information and foster discussion about how best to preserve and restore the historic site.

For a time, the Mt. Washington site was completely closed to the public. One gallery is now open on weekends. During the week, Autry employees work in the closed gallery spaces, doing conservation work on the collection. One important component of the conservation work is that pieces are being photographed and digital photos added to a searchable online database.

We guessed–correctly it turned out–that there would be no cafe on site and brought sandwiches and other picnic supplies. We parked in one of the two handicapped spots in the museum’s front courtyard and ate our lunch at one of several tables under the arcade.

SW_lunch

The current exhibition is Four Centuries of Pueblo Pottery. There were some truly impressive pieces on display, from the early 17th century to the present. The explanations which accompany the pottery items set the historical context well. The technical details are explained, as are the differences between the different pueblo cultures.

Southwest_gallery

Admission is free, with donations encouraged. The top level is wheelchair accessible. There is a small bottom area open to the public as well, but the interior connection is only by staircase. We each took a quick look at the lower level but did not try to get Margaret down there, since there is not yet a gallery reopened downstairs. The lower level could be accessed by wheelchair patrons, but one would have to enter from the street below the museum, go up a ramp, through the pedestrian tunnel, then up an elevator. That lower level currently just contains a timeline of the museum’s history, a few display cases showing archaeological techniques, the restrooms, and a video terminal on which one can view digital photos of the museum’s basket collection.

There is a Metro stop right across the street from the pedestrian entrance to the museum. Visitors who come by car drive up a narrow winding driveway. There is a general parking lot, which we did not explore, and two handicapped spaces right in front of the museum.

Our only gripe is that there is too little information about the museum online. There is one page on the Autry’s website devoted to the Mt. Washington campus, but it fails to give practical visitor information such as whether there is a cafe on site (there is not), what parking is available, and whether the building is wheelchair accessible (mostly it is, as noted above). Meredith emailed the Autry asking for more information but did not receive a reply.

After the museum visit we met Meredith’s sister Kathleen for coffee. She showed us and Margaret photos from her recent trip.

Autry — Civil War

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Autry National Center
Griffith Park
May 9, 2015

Autry horse

We took Margaret to see a new exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West: Empire and Liberty, the Civil War and the West. It runs through January 3, 2016. It is not narrowly focused on the war alone. Rather it gives a broad context both before and after the war, about westward expansion and racial tensions. The exhibition includes over 200 artifacts and tells the story not only of African-Americans in the west, but also that of Chinese immigrants, and of Native Americans relocated to the Indian Territories.

Autry video

Margaret enjoyed the small video displays scattered throughout the exhibit, which narrated various individual stories. She also was very impressed with the wedding dress on display, made in the mid 19th century by a woman who immigrated from Scotland to Utah. Meredith found it particularly chilling to read old bills of sale for slaves, listing them matter-of-factly by name, age, and gender. Near those bills of sale was displayed a labor contract between a California merchant and a Chinese laborer, binding the Chinese immigrant to work for the merchant for three years, at a rate of $12 per month. The laborer had to first pay back the cost of his passage ($30) before earning any cash for himself. Bob speculated that even after that point the poor man might have been obligated to buy food and goods from the “company store.” Margaret told us that labor contract reminded her of her great-grandfather’s apprenticeship contract as a carpenter, a document Margaret’s parents had when she was a girl.

After leaving the Empire and Liberty exhibition, we strolled through the Imagination gallery, which has many artifacts from western movies and other western shows, and we lingered over the singing cowboy section. Gene Autry is prominently featured, of course. When we had coffee after our museum visit, Margaret reminisced about seeing Gene Autry perform with a rodeo, which came to the Boston Garden when she was a girl.

We also strolled through the Western art gallery. It includes artifacts as well as paintings and sculptures, and we enjoyed seeing again a piece that we have seen there before, a beautifully restored classic Indian motorcycle.

We did not tour the permanent collection of Western artifacts downstairs on this visit. We had encountered a lot of traffic coming up from San Diego and arrived a little later than we had planned. We had lingered in the three galleries on the top floor so found them sufficient for this visit.

We had lunch in the museum café, which offers sandwiches, salads, and burgers and a few other items. Service was excellent. Customers order at the counter, and then food is brought to the table. Margaret was pleased that their standard cola is Pepsi; she much prefers it to Coke, but most restaurants do not stock it. The food was excellent, and we all enjoyed our sandwiches. Over lunch Margaret shared with us a postcard she had received recently from our youngest daughter, and she reminisced about the first postcard she had ever sent, over 70 years ago, to her parents when she was away at scout camp at about age six. It was a penny postcard, and she worried that she had not addressed it properly or put the right postage on it, but she had done all that correctly, of course, and the card did reach its destination. Margaret spoke softly but was very alert, and she did not struggle with any aphasia. It was a very pleasant outing for all of us.

Adult admission is $10. Wheelchair access is excellent, and parking is free. The museum is closed on most Mondays and some holidays.

Autry National Center

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Autry National Center
Griffith Park
September 7, 2014

We met up with two of our daughters and their significant others (husband of one, boyfriend of the other) at the Autry Museum of the American West. The museum is located in Griffith Park, across from the zoo. The Autry participates in Bank of America’s Museums on Us program, so on the first full weekend of each month admission is free to B of A debit or credit card holders.

Autry 3 generations

Together with Margaret, our group explored the two special exhibitions currently offered. The first exhibit we toured was Floral Journey: Native North American Beadwork. That exhibition runs through April 26, 2015. The exhibition features over 250 Native American beadwork pieces with floral designs. There are many stunning pieces, and tribal cultures from all over North America are represented. Most of the pieces are historical pieces from the 19th or early 20th century. Sprinkled throughout the exhibition are some modern pieces, also by Native American artists, inspired by their cultural history. The exhibition combines two of Margaret’s passions, handwork and Native American culture, and she enjoyed it very much.

We also toured the Route 66: the Road and the Romance exhibition, which will remain open through January 4, 2015. The exhibition was both large and well thought out, with a variety of artifacts on display, ranging from historic road signs to a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette to drawings from the movie Cars. The first few display cases set the background for the exhibition, explaining how difficult travel was and how few well-maintained through roads there were, prior to the time Route 66 and other US highways were built, starting in the 1920’s.

Autry MB 66

Memorabilia from the construction and dedication of the highway are on display. There are extensive items showing its role as a migration route for Dustbowl immigrants in the Depression, including a page from Steinbeck’s manuscript for The Grapes of Wrath, a first edition of the book, and a related photo essay from Life magazine. At several points in the exhibit there are some short videos which can be heard through headphones. Margaret and Meredith listened to several vignettes, including the reminisces of a Japanese American who grew up in Gallup, New Mexico and one of the co-creators of the Cars movie who took a road trip along the route to get inspiration for the movie.

The group ate in the museum café. They serve excellent food, semi-cafeteria style. One orders at the counter and gets drinks there, then sits and the food is brought out to the table by staff when it is ready. The menu is mainly sandwiches, burgers, soups, and salads. Margaret and Meredith each had portobello mushroom burgers. Bob and our middle daughter opted for half sandwich / cup of chili combos. The younger men had pulled pork sandwiches, and our youngest daughter had a fry bread chicken taco. The café serves soft drinks, beer, and wine. It usually offers vintage soft drinks in addition to modern ones, like sarsaparilla and cream soda, but they were out of those the day we visited. The staff is very knowledgeable and helpful. We have always enjoyed eating there. The prices were quite reasonable for museum fare; the bill for all seven of us came to just under $100.

There are rotating family activities. Today they were set up to have families do beadwork, playing on the theme of the Floral Journey exhibit. The permanent collection is extensive and impressive. We did not stay to look at it today, although we have seen it in the past. Bob, Meredith, and Margaret left early to meet up with Kathleen for coffee. Bob first took the young people down to show them the historic gun collection, which is quite extensive. The four of them stayed on to look at the rest of the permanent collection after we left. The museum is an interesting blend of the historic West and the Hollywood West. The permanent collection has many artifacts from the American West, including not only items from the majority culture but also items representative of minorities, women, and Native Americans. There is also an extensive area devoted to memorabilia such as props and posters from Western movies, from the silent era through spaghetti Westerns and everything in between, including of course Gene Autry films.

Wheelchair access is excellent. Parking is free.

There are a number of special events at the Autry, and it is a good idea to check their calendar to see what may be happening on a given day. On past visits we have seen a farmers market, and a Western family day celebration.

We did not take advantage of the docents this time, but in the past we have joined docent led tours through the special exhibitions and been very pleased with the quality of those presentations.

The Autry merged with, or perhaps acquired, the Southwest Museum back in 2003. The Southwest Museum has a very extensive collection of Native American artifacts, far more than it can exhibit. Having the large museum space the Autry offers in Griffith Park allows for showing more of those pieces to the public. Meredith and Margaret visited the Southwest Museum back in the 1970’s or early 80’s, before the building was damaged in the Northridge earthquake, and long before wheelchair access was a concern for us. There has been some controversy about the Autry’s control of the Southwest Museum and its collection. We do not know enough about the background of the controversy to have an opinion, but we do wonder if the critics have an appreciation of just how difficult and expensive it is, both to restore and maintain historic structures like the old Southwest adobe, and to maintain delicate collections like those originally housed in that facility.