IGNACIO – If you want to a spend a Sunday afternoon in a $38 million architectural masterpiece, admiring art and artifacts and getting an appreciation for the historical hardships and high points of the Southern Utes, you had better do it soon.
After Labor Day weekend, the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum will be closed on Sundays. It is advisable to check the operating hours before driving to Ignacio. The museum was closed on weekends during the spring, too.
The issue is that the museum is expensive to keep open, officials said.
“We just don’t get (the traffic); maybe we’re too far away from Durango,” said Venessa Carel, museum technician.
For 2013, the museum had received 1,643 visitors as of Monday. While 2013 is more than half over, attendance is less than half (31 percent) of what it was in 2012, the museum’s first full year of operation, when it received 5,319 visitors. The current facility originally opened in the summer of 2011.
On a Wednesday afternoon in early July, a scavenger hunt for kids was canceled because no one showed. The number of visitors could be counted on one hand. Employees had to be found to open the gift shop during another visit in mid-June.
The lack of attendance underscores a seemingly uphill challenge the museum faces from its chief patron, the Southern Ute Tribe, which annually provides about $700,000 to $900,000 of the museum’s $1.1 million operating budget, according to tax filings and interviews.
The tribe also has paid for a building that was designed by Johnpaul Jones, the same architect responsible for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
The tribe wants the museum to be self-sufficient by 2015. It has offered an incentive, tempting the institution with a $5 million matching grant if the museum can also raise $5 million on its own.
In these economic times, the museum is not unlike a recent college graduate living with his or her parents because the grad cannot find a good job, acknowledged Nathan Strong Elk, the museum’s executive director.
“When you have kids, you want them to be self-sufficient, take care of themselves when they turn 18 or 21, whenever that magic age is. But sometimes (they have to live at home with their parents),” Strong Elk said.
“It’s almost like the same thing,” he continued. “I think we can make it (to self-sufficiency in 2015). If we do want to live with our parents, we might have to negotiate another subsidy.”
Jay Harrison, director of the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, was empathetic, noting that the last few years have been hard financially on cultural institutions.
Foundations and patrons have taken breaks in awarding grants. They often change their funding criteria.
“The requirements are always changing, and that can be challenging,” Harrison said.
The Southern Ute Tribe declined to comment for this story, said tribal spokeswoman Beth Santistevan.
Museum attractions
The museum focuses on the cultural identity of the Southern Utes, notably through oral histories preserved on audiotape and videotape.
To attract more visitors, the museum will have to broaden its cultural appeal, even within the local Native American community, Strong Elk said.
“I know it’s the Southern Utes’ Cultural Center and Museum, but hopefully we talk to the elders more and we can get other tribes to come in here – the Hopis, the (Ute) Mountain Utes. (They) can come in to share our culture and dances.”
Strong Elk said many elders feel the same way.
“Some of the elders now want some variety,” he said. “They want to see some different things instead of having to travel here and there (to other museums). It would be good for the tourists.”
But it can be difficult for the museum to get material for even Southern Ute exhibits.
The museum, for example, does not have the headdress of Chief Sapiah, commonly known as Buckskin Charley. The revered Southern Ute leader who succeeded Chief Ouray was awarded a peace medal from President Benjamin Harrison and rode with Geronimo in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in 1905.
Instead, the headdress is at the Ute Indian Museum, a state historical museum in Montrose.
“Some of the elders want it there in Montrose. Some of the elders want it over here. It is one of those things where you have to get consensus,” Strong Elk said.
Aside from a model of a big chocolate-chip cookie, there is not much information about the tribe’s fortunes in tapping natural gas. The chocolate-chip cookie was used in court to make the point that gas cannot be considered separate from the Southern Utes’ land just as much as chocolate chips cannot be separated from a cookie.
Strong Elk said he wants to find a funder to do a special exhibit about natural gas.
He also wants to work with similar institutions to build more mutually beneficial relationships, such as working with Durango Discovery Museum on science exhibits for kids, having Music in the Mountains do a concert at the museum and promoting the museum at the nearby Chimney Rock National Monument.
Harrison, the director of the Center of Southwest Studies, said, “We view the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum as a tremendous resource, not just for the tribe but for the region. We have them high on our list for sharing programs.”
Harrison said many cultural groups are active in doing cross-promotions and giving visitors a “broader picture of what they can do in the area.”
The website for the Four Corners Museum Network is hosted at the Center of Southwest Studies.
“We’re encouraging the Southern Utes to become more involved and provide more information,” Harrison said.
jhaug@durangoherald.com
