The Autry Museum’s Resources Center is a state-of-the-art collections stewardship, educational, and research facility located in Burbank to protect and preserve the Autry’s extensive collections, including those once housed at the historic Southwest Museum. Designed by Chu—Gooding Architects, the LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building includes a reading room, tribal community spaces and collections care rooms. Landscaping and ceremonial gardens were designed by Costello Kennedy Landscape Architecture, with active input from Southern California Native community members. 

At the Resources Center, Native community members, researchers, students, teachers, and artists can access the more than 600,000 artifacts, cultural materials, artworks, and library materials cared for in the collections of the Autry Museum. 

“The Resources Center fulfills the Autry’s obligation to safeguard the collections with which we are entrusted, to steward them in collaboration with Native communities of origin, and to promote study that enriches our understanding of the complex history and cultural diversity of the American West.”  

—Stephen Aron, President and CEO. 

In addition to housing the collection, the Resources Center is a space meant to serve as a conduit for collaboration with Native communities, who see the important items stored there as living objects imbued with the spirits of their Ancestors. 

“The history between museums and Native people has been a less than honorable one. There's always been this tension.  The idea of creating a facility where Native people can engage with works their Ancestors created, and work collaboratively and have access — which they haven’t had for many, many years — I think is really, critically, important to the cultural heritage and also the Autry’s relationship with tribes.” 

—Joe Horse Capture, Vice President of Native Collections & the Ahmanson Curator of Native American History and Culture

For more information about the collections and access, please see the Research & Collections pages