The Autry Museum of the American West - Planning a Sustainable Preservation Environment

FAIN: PF-271949-20

Autry Museum (Los Angeles, CA 90027-1462)
LaLena Lewark (Project Director: January 2020 to present)

A planning project to explore sustainable preservation strategies that can address deteriorating environmental conditions in museum storage and exhibition areas. Improved environmental conditions would preserve the Autry’s collection of over 600,000 historical, archival, and library materials and works of art that represent the diverse cultures, perspectives, and ideas of the American West.

The Autry, located in historic Griffith Park in Los Angeles, requests a planning grant from NEH to assist the museum in preserving its extremely diverse collection of more than 600,000 significant and culturally unique assets, including the second largest assemblage of Native American objects in the United States. Items in the collection range in age from pre-contact to the present, documenting Native history and cultures throughout the Americas. The items provide rare opportunities for research, teaching and lifelong learning in the humanities for students, teachers, artists, researchers, scholars, historians and others. The project will assemble an experienced group of interdisciplinary experts, who will work collaboratively to address increasingly extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity in the Autry Museum by recommending remedial "next steps" to respond to anticipated climate trends and support sustainable preventive conservation measures.