At the most recent board of directors' meeting, the Autry voted to tell Councilman Jose Huizar (CD14), the Southwest Museum Society, the Friends of the Southwest Museum, and the citizens of Los Angeles to effectively 'go to hell', threatening the City with taking both their museum and the billion dollar collection of the Southwest Museum out of town. The exact quote from John Gray or one of their board muckie-mucks went something like... '...you don't want to be responsible for losing both the Autry Museum AND the Southwest, do you?'
(read CM Huizar's response)
Oh my. Lose the Autry? That austere institute, quietly nestled on eleven acres of invaluable open space in Griffith Park for a mere $1 per year that taxpayers subsidize to the tune of $27.5 million? That bastion of academic fortitude? The keeper of all true history related to the American West?
What a huge loss to the upper eschelons of the academic community if the Autry were to leave LA! I mean, after all, just look at their most recent offering, absolutely steeped in the true essence of the American West.
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THIS MUSEUM ?
From the Autry's web site:
On display starting July 28, 2009
The Autry National Center is proud to announce the installation of the two intertwined shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Focus Features 2005 groundbreaking film Brokeback Mountain, also starring Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.
The shirts will be displayed as part of a reinstallation of the Contemporary Westerns case in the Autry’s Imagination Gallery. Directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee, the film is adapted from the short story by Pulitzer Prize–winning author E. Annie Proulx in her Close Range: Wyoming Stories collection. The shirts are on loan from collector, producer, and socio political commentator Tom Gregory.
The Western genre is an American art form that has played a crucial role in the development of American popular culture. Putting the Western into a larger historical context, the Imagination Gallery shows how the genre has evolved over the last one hundred years in response to social and cultural changes taking place in America. The iconic shirts are at the center of the Contemporary Westerns case in order to highlight Brokeback Mountain’s significance in keeping the Western genre alive and thriving in the new millennium, and also to spotlight the LGBT community’s struggle for safety and inclusion in the rural, Western communities from where many originate yet often feel forced to abandon....
(read CM Huizar's response)
Oh my. Lose the Autry? That austere institute, quietly nestled on eleven acres of invaluable open space in Griffith Park for a mere $1 per year that taxpayers subsidize to the tune of $27.5 million? That bastion of academic fortitude? The keeper of all true history related to the American West?
What a huge loss to the upper eschelons of the academic community if the Autry were to leave LA! I mean, after all, just look at their most recent offering, absolutely steeped in the true essence of the American West.
WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT THIS MUSEUM ?
From the Autry's web site:
On display starting July 28, 2009
The Autry National Center is proud to announce the installation of the two intertwined shirts worn by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Focus Features 2005 groundbreaking film Brokeback Mountain, also starring Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.The shirts will be displayed as part of a reinstallation of the Contemporary Westerns case in the Autry’s Imagination Gallery. Directed by Oscar winner Ang Lee, the film is adapted from the short story by Pulitzer Prize–winning author E. Annie Proulx in her Close Range: Wyoming Stories collection. The shirts are on loan from collector, producer, and socio political commentator Tom Gregory.
The Western genre is an American art form that has played a crucial role in the development of American popular culture. Putting the Western into a larger historical context, the Imagination Gallery shows how the genre has evolved over the last one hundred years in response to social and cultural changes taking place in America. The iconic shirts are at the center of the Contemporary Westerns case in order to highlight Brokeback Mountain’s significance in keeping the Western genre alive and thriving in the new millennium, and also to spotlight the LGBT community’s struggle for safety and inclusion in the rural, Western communities from where many originate yet often feel forced to abandon....
