The Autry Museum of the American West sought an innovative solution to address their pressing collection challenges: Following the museum’s acquisition of the Southwest Museum collection, the Autry needed a climate-controlled facility to properly house the second largest collection of Native American objects and artifacts in the United States.
The LEED Gold Certified Autry Resource Center reconfigures and consolidates the Autry Museum of the American West’s Research Institute and collection storage facilities into a single storage location that is closed to the general public and provides singular access to visiting scholars.
The program includes an oversized lobby that serves as a Large Object Storage Area and multi-purpose event space, a reading room for scholars to conduct on-site research, collections storage areas, conservation labs, and administrative areas.
The existing, uninhabitable structure, which had been abandoned by the previous Owner, was in fact four disparate commercial buildings with varying floor levels that were adapted into a wholistic program.
Existing resources of building components were harvested, reused, and reprogrammed to be integrated with the design of the Resource Center.
The Autry Resource Center provides the Autry Museum staff and visiting scholars with a state-of-the-art, multi-zone, climate-controlled storage facility (compliant with American Alliance of Museums guidelines) to house a wide range of treasured art objects and fragile artifacts.
The design also created a mission responsive NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) facilities program, including a ceremonial room and outdoor ceremonial garden, to accommodate and assist Native American tribes in the viewing of sacred artifacts as well as those objects’ use on site in the tribes’ ceremonial rituals.
