The Autry National Center is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and public programs, including lectures, film, theater, festivals, family events, and music, and performs scholarship, research, and educational outreach. It has two sites and attracts about 150,000 visitors annually.
In 2013, it extensively redesigned and renovated the Irene Helen Jones Parks Gallery of Art and the Gamble Firearms Gallery in its main building, known as the Autry National Center. In its related opening exhibit for the Parks Gallery, Art of the West, the new organization enabled material to be presented in relation to themes rather than chronology, and paintings were shown next to crafts, photography, video and other elements in new relationships.
Locations
The Autry National Center has two sites, about 8 miles (13Â km) apart:
- Griffith Park 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles
- Mt. Washington, 234 Museum Drive, Los Angeles (Southwest Museum of the American Indian building and ethnobotanical garden, open on Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.)
Elements
The Autry was established in 1988 by actor and businessman Gene Autry (as "Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum") to explore and share the comprehensive story of the American West and its multiple cultures, and interpret its significance. Its Griffith Park collection includes 21,000 paintings, sculptures, costumes, textiles, firearms, tools, toys, musical instruments, and other objects. The museum presents contemporary and historical exhibitions, year-round programs for children, intellectual forums, and the Native Voices at the Autry performing arts series. The museum is located in Griffith Park across from the Los Angeles Zoo.
The 4,000-square foot Parks Gallery was renovated in 2013 and has been organized into three theme areas: Religion and Ritual, Land and Landscape, Migration and Movement, and also contains two mini galleries with revolving exhibits. This enables flexible curating of the museum's extensive materials: paintings can be placed near textiles, photographs, pottery and videos. The spaces can also be used for more flexible programming.
The Gamble Firearms Gallery also was renovated in 2013. It now shows more of the context and place of firearms in the Old West; curators grouped firearms by themes: "hunting and trapping, the impact of technology on firearms, the conservation movement and the West in popular culture." This is part of the Western Frontiers: Stories of Fact and Fiction Gallery.
- The Autry's Southwest Museum of the American Indian Collection of Native American art is one of the most significant of its kind in the United States, second only to the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian. The 238,000-piece collection includes 14,000 baskets, 10,000 ceramic items, 6,300 textiles and weavings, and more than 1,100 pieces of jewelry. It represents work by indigenous peoples from Alaska to South America, with an emphasis on cultures of California and the Southwestern United States.
- The Autry Institute includes the collections of the Braun Research Library and the Autry Library. It is a research and publishing enterprise that produces and supports scholarly work in Western history and the arts. In 2002, the Women of the West Museum of Colorado merged with the Institute. This has broadened the scholarly and educational emphasis to include gender issues and women’s experiences in the American West. In addition, the International Gay Rodeo Association's (IGRA) archives are now held by the Autry Library.
References
Further reading
- "Your guide to Gene Autry, America's Favorite Singing Cowboy," pamphlet from the Autry National Center
- "Pocket guide: Explore the past, present, & future of the American West," pamphlet from the Autry National Center
External links
- Autry National Center Website
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