Citizens' Voice from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania • 42

CM American Indian museum gets new lease on life in oo CD CO By BILL MARVEL Dallas Times Herald taking control of the museum's affairs, and under a court-ordered settlement, Dockstader and several trustees were forced to resign. An inventory of the museum's holdings was ordered, and the whole institution was overhauled. The Museum of the American Indian today is in many ways a brand-new institution. "We have a totally new skin," says Force, who was hired to write the reorganization plan, then asked to stay on and put the plan into effect. "We have new trustees, a new staff, a new director, a new policy, new programs." But in other ways, it is the same old museum.

There is the location, for example. in, Heye stored them in buildings all over New York City. Finally, in 1916, he established the growing collection as a public trust. Six years later the museum itself opened. Today, 63 years later, it still occupies the same building.

For 35 years Heye ran his museum like a iefdom. He meticulously lettered the catalog number on almost every object that came through the door. He employed professionals to do his field work, but he often hired and fired on whim. When he died at the age of 82, the director was his wife's foot doctor. "Our founder had a great eye," says Dr.

Roland Force, the museum's director since 1977. "He knew the subject and collected with discrimination. But he did not leave an adequate endowment to meet the mandate he set." After Heye's death the trustees struggled to put the institution on a professional basis. They hired Arizona-born ethnologist Frederick J. Dockstader to run the museum, but with in a few years all the problems that had been accumulating during the Heye years began to catch up with the new director.

Faced with inadequate funds, placed in charge of a collection whose true extent or value nobody knew, Dockstader began quietly selling and trading objects to certain trustees St. Hedwig's TO CO a. CD u. CO CD i CO CD CD CJ CD 6 A Mother's Day covered dish party was held by St. Hedwig's Senior Citizens in the school hall, with Ann Delias presiding.

Registrar Rose Kulakowski reported 81 members in attendance. Serving were: Vern Maledobry, Margaret Reilly, Josephine Rovine, Vickie Prescavage, Sophie Roman, Johanna Rahl, Sophie Rusiloski and Susan Rusiloski. Frances Rupinski was kitchen chairman. Invocation was given by Rev. Paul Zielinski.

Vice president Betty Ballo led members in prayer and the Pledge to the Flag. Reports were given by secretary Leona Verbyla and treasurer Stella Gilefski. Next meeting is scheduled on May 22 at 1:30 p.m. ana aeaiers. ine museum, he later conceded, usually cam out on the short end of the transactions.

In 1975 the scandal broke. The director and snme nf th trustees, including TV talk show host Dick Cavett. NEW YORK A visitor might walk right past the Museum of the American Indian if it were not for the sign in front. From the outside there is not much to see, just one gray building in a row of gray buildings forming an enclave on the northern edge of Harlem. Inside it is even less impressive, a dim, dingy space cluttered with display cases.

A handful of visitors in here can seem like a crowd. With its badly lighted and cluttered displays, it looks like all those earnest little museums of state and local history scattered around the country, filled with Grandmother's castoffs but with one difference: This museum happens to house the world's most impressive collection of American Indian art and artifacts. No wonder H. Ross Perot has offered $70 million to move the whole works from New York City to Texas. One of the golden rules of business is to find something that is undervalued, buy it cheaply and then wait for its value to increase.

If it were a commercial venture, the Museum of the American Indian would be a superlative investment. More than 46,000 objects are packed into its three floors, case after case of baskets, beaded buckskin, pottery, peace pipes, spear points, tomahawks, wampum belts and figurines spanning the Americas from Tierra del Fuego to Greenland and the tip of Alaska, and from the prehistoric to the present. These objects are jammed so close together that often there is no room for individual labels, so the visitor is not entirely sure what he is looking at. Yet many of these artifacts are almost unbelievably rare, one-of-a-kind items that would be the tenterpiece of any other museum's collection. And that is a very small part about three to four percent of the museum's total holdings.

Stored in a warehouse out in the East Bronx is the bulk of the collection, more than a million objects in all. New Yorkers, who have neglected the museum for most of its existence, tend to view Perot's offer as a raid. But it would be more accurate to describe it as a rescue mission, something like what Perot once organized to spring two of his employees from an Iranian prison. For the Museum of the American Indian is in trouble, and has been almost since the death of its founder, George Gustav Heye, in 1957. Heye was one of the strangest figures in the annals of American museums.

A mining engineer who made a fortune in oil investments, he started his collection in 1896 while supervising construction of a bridge in Arizona. By the turn of the century he was sending out his own expeditions to acquire Indian art. As the objects came pouring cused of playing fast and loose with the museum's collection. The attorney general of New York entered the case, an For easier upkeep, fewer repairs, ttrunslt a new gas heating system. Reliable, natural gas heating systems are built to last longer.

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Chairpersons are Ruthie O'Dell, left and Rachel Costlett, right. In addition to good quality used clothing and household items, home baked goods will also be offered for sale. Anyone wishing to donate items for sale may contact Mrs. Madge Kile at the Hospice office at 288-5428 to make arrangements for pick-up. Hospice Saint John, a program of home care for persons living with a life threatening illness, is a division of Lutheran Welfare Service of Northeastern Pennsylvania and a member agency of the Wyoming Valley United Way.

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