Former name | Southwest Museum of the American Indian |
---|---|
Established | 1907 |
Dissolved | 2022 |
Location | 234 Museum Drive Los Angeles, California |
Coordinates | 34°06′01″N 118°12′21″W / 34.1004°N 118.2059°W |
Founder | Charles Fletcher Lummis |
Architect | Sumner Hunt |
Public transit access | Southwest Museum |
Website | theautry |
Built | 1912–1914 |
Architectural style | Mission/Spanish Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 92001270 |
LAHCM No. | 283 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | March 11, 2004 |
Designated LAHCM | August 29, 1984 |
The Southwest Museum of the American Indian was a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco canyon and stream. The museum was owned, and later absorbed by, the Autry Museum of the American West. Its collections dealt mainly with Native Americans. It also had an extensive collection of pre-Hispanic, Spanish colonial, Latino, and Western American art and artifacts.
Major collections included American Indians of the Great Plains, American Indians of California, and American Indians of the Northwest Coast. Most of those materials were moved off-site.[1] The Autry and the Southwest Museum hold the second-largest collection of indigenous art and artifacts in the country, second to the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.[2]
The Metro A Line stops down the hill from the museum at the Southwest Museum station. About a block from the A Line stop is an entrance on Museum Drive that opens to a long tunnel formerly filled with dioramas, since removed by the Autry Museum and placed in storage. At the end of the tunnel is an elevator to the museum's lower lobby.
The museum closed permanently in September 2022.