Chumash Indian Museum temporarily closes

Facing financial challenges, the Chumash Indian Museum in Thousand Oaks temporarily closed this week.

It should reopen in a few weeks, around Thanksgiving, said Barbara Tejada, board chairwoman of the Oakbrook Park Chumash Indian Corp., the nonprofit that runs the museum. The museum's exterior exhibits, including a village and a game field, remain open.

The downtime will be used by the board to assess how to cut costs, including laying off some members of the museum's small paid staff, and look at ways to generate more revenue, Tejada said.

"We're running into some financial difficulties, and the board has decided to do a temporary closure while we evaluate everything from top to bottom," she said. "We're really looking at the entire organization and making sure that we're operating in a fiscally responsible and accountable manner and that we're offering all the educational programs and general programs to the public that we want to be offering."

Located at 3290 Lang Ranch Parkway in Oakbrook Regional Park, the museum is dedicated to preserving the cultural and historical legacy of the Chumash Native American people, who began inhabiting portions of Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Los Angeles counties, and some of the Channel Islands, about 12,000 years ago. The museum opened in 1994.

The park, a designated archaeological site, is owned by the Conejo Recreation and Park District, as is the building that houses the museum. The Oakbrook Park Chumash Indian Corp. runs the museum and owns its exhibits. The district and the nonprofit have a concessionaire agreement under which the museum pays a nominal annual rent.

While the district provides some maintenance support, Tejada said it is up to the nonprofit "to come up with all of our operating expenses on our own."

The museum's annual operating budget is under $200,000, she said.

The museum raises revenue through admissions, a paid school tour program and modest gift shop sales, Tejada said.

"Those are sort of the three primary income sources," she said. "We've been looking into grants, as well, and we've found a little bit of success. But sometimes those grants haven't worked out. So we're looking really to diversify our funding sources," including trying to build a more robust membership program by offering additional benefits such as workshops and a lecture series, the board chairwoman said.

"And we're really looking for greater donations from the community to keep us running," she said.

The nonprofit's board wants to bulk up its reserves to use as matching funds, which many grants require, she said.

"There have been some opportunities where we didn't have sufficient matching funds to even be able to apply for grants to begin with," she said.

Jim Friedl, general manager of the park district, said he believes trying to expand the museum's membership program is a solid strategy.

"I think a lot of people in town are happy to pay $25 or $50 a year to be considered a member, knowing that they're helping out with that cause," he said.

The board also wants to expand its staff of volunteers as another cost-cutting measure, Tejada said.

"We have kind of a small volunteer program, but we'd like to build it up more," she said. "There is a lot of interest by people who would like to assist."

The museum also wants to better engage the present-day Chumash community, members of which compose about half of its board, Tejada said.

Toward that end, the board is considering more exhibits reflecting contemporary Chumash culture.

"Our exhibits have really focused on the Chumash people in the past, and we'd really like to also include representations of what the current Chumash community represents," she said. "That's one thing that is kind of lacking from our current exhibits."

Friedl said the museum's board "has some work to do. But they seem committed to getting that work done, getting the ship righted so to speak and reopening relatively quickly. It's a great community asset."