LOS ANGELES — The West isn`t very wild anymore. Yet in many people`s minds, it always will be a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play-a place where cowboys ride the range and fortune-seekers look for gold.
With the recent opening of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, that history lives in more than people`s minds. The three-story, 139,000-square-foot museum in Griffith Park preserves and interprets the West of the history books and the West of such media as movies and television.
The museum structure-an architectural synthesis of Spanish and Southwestern traditions-stands on 2 1/2 acres of a 13-acre site that is leased from the city of Los Angeles.
The institution has been the longtime dream of Gene Autry, himself a sort of Western artifact as Hollywood`s famous singing cowboy who now owns radio stations, music-publishing companies, real estate and baseball`s California Angels.
The Autry Foundation, a Los Angeles-based charitable organization, established the museum and funded its $34 million construction.
The museum defines the West as the part of the United States west of the Mississippi River. Its exhibits present the story of this region from prehistory to the present, emphasizing the period from the mid-18th through the mid-20th Centuries when the region experienced rapid movements of people and intense development.
As its name indicates, the museum is a place where people can learn about their heritage.
``We`re the end of a long line of people who occupy what we call the West,`` said James Nottage, the museum`s curator. ``Understanding what shaped the lives of our predecessors gives us tools to understand our own lives today.``
This heritage belongs to people throughout the United States. ``So many of our forefathers came from overseas to different parts of the United States, and so many of them came west on the prairie schooners to seek their fortunes,`` said Joanne D. Hale, the museum`s executive director.
Fascination with the West extends far beyond U.S. boundaries, Hale observed. ``We were told that after the Japanese Disneyland had been open for a while, there was a questionnaire that was presented to all the entrants, and one of the questions was: `What things do you think of when you think of the United States?` The No. 1 response was cowboys and Indians. No. 2 was Hollywood. No. 3 was American gangsters. And I have to say that if you consider Billy the Kid as an American gangster, we address all three.``
Movies, television and radio are primarily responsible for establishing the enduring popularity of the West-especially its shoot-`em-up days of cowboys and Indians.
In Westerns, Hale said, ``there were a lot of chases, and a good guy and a bad guy. And you didn`t have to worry how it was going to turn out; you always knew the guy in the black hat was going to lose in the end. It was kind of reassuring to know that the good guy was always going to win.``
In the real West, of course, it wasn`t so easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. For instance, the settlers and cowboys weren`t always the white hat-wearing peacekeepers of the frontier, and the Indians weren`t the tomahawk-wielding aggressors.
Hale said the museum staff is sensitive to the misperceptions communicated by the media. As a result, she said, the museum`s presentations are as authentic and accurate as possible.
On view are about 3,000 artifacts from the museum`s collection of 16,000 items, which is worth $20 million. The items are displayed in seven themed galleries, each of which is named for a spirit that characterizes the West.
The Spirit of Discovery begins its story in prehistory and continues through the Spanish, French and early American exploration of the area. The Spirit of Opportunity portrays the experiences of pioneers venturing into the frontier and establishing homes there. The Spirit of Conquest depicts the struggles involved with man and nature as the West was settled. The Spirit of Community portrays the various communities within frontier society. The Spirit of the Cowboy looks at the history of cowboys, those rugged individuals who rode the range. The Spirit of Romance presents depictions of the West by writers, artists and performers. And the Spirit of Imagination conveys the mythical West as presented by such media as movies, television and radio.
Walt Disney Imagineering designed the exhibit areas, which contain cases of artifacts and art works as well as dioramas and multimedia presentations. As visitors wander through the displays, they encounter sights such as:
- A multimedia presentation that shows a pioneer family camping beside its covered wagon while excerpts about the hard life on the frontier are read from actual diaries.
- A small gallery full of gleaming Colt firearms.
- Epic scenes of cowboys, Indians and nature by such artists as Frederic Remington, Albert Bierstadt, John Mix Stanley, Seth Eastman, Thomas Moran and William Tylee Ranney.