Southwest Museum

The museum contains some of the finest examples of Indian art and artifacts in the United States. Beyond this primary emphasis, the Southwest Museum holds important collections of Mesoamerican and South American Precolumbian pottery and textiles, and Hispanic folk and decorative arts.

HISTORY

The oldest museum in Los Angeles, the Southwest Museum was founded in 1907 by Charles Fletcher Lummis and members of the Southwest Society, a branch of the Archaeological Institute of America. The museum was located in downtown Los Angeles until 1914, when the doors of the present building opened. Designed by the firm of Sumner Hunt and Silas Burns, the Southwest Museum building is now a Los Angeles historic landmark.

Highlights & Collections:

• American Indian art and artifacts;
• permanent exhibitions on Plains,
• Southwest, Northwest Coast and California Indian tribes;
• changing exhibitions.

Exhibits:

The museum's four main exhibit halls focus on the native people of the Southwest, California, the Great Plains, and the Northwest Coast.

Exhibit highlights include a replica of a Santa Susana Mountains Chumash Indian rock art site and an 18-foot Southern Cheyenne tipi.

Visitors may survey prehistoric Southwest painted pottery, and enjoy rotating displays from the museum's basketry collection - one of the largest such collections in the United States.

Traveling exhibitions from other museums and changing exhibitions from the Southwest Museum permanent collection are also presented throughout the year.

Throughout the year the museum offers a wide range of programs including: performances, classes, lectures, festivals, films and demonstrations by noted artists and other eduefational programs for members and the general public.

Guided gallery tours are offered year-round, by reservation, for student and adult groups.

Hours:

• Open Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 5:00,
• the Museum is closed on major holidays.

Admission & Directions:

• Adults, $5;
• students & seniors, $3;
• youths 7-18, $2; children under 6, free.
• For information call 213-221-2164.