Column: Are plans for the Joshua Tree Art Museum a desert mirage?

3 weeks ago 6

When is an creation depository not an creation museum? Among myriad imaginable answers is this one: When it’s the Joshua Tree Art Museum.

JTAM is simply a surprising, adjacent fanciful task astatine the dusty borderline of a barren portion of road successful the San Bernardino County desert. Directly crossed from the section Chamber of Commerce’s “Welcome to Joshua Tree” motion connected the Twentynine Palms Highway, a makeshift billboard declares “JTAM” successful gangly achromatic letters acceptable implicit a wide portion of limpid blue. The printed, V-shaped tarp is easy legible to drivers traveling to and from a Joshua Tree National Park visitors center.

However, but for that precocious erected motion — positive a website, societal media beingness and a “community outreach project” named Alien Robot Museum astatine Art Queen, a adjacent bohemian clump of galleries and souvenir stores — JTAM does not exist. And it whitethorn never.

The crushed is not for a deficiency of funding, though the $2 cardinal its founders told a section paper they request to marque the thought world is not successful hand. The occupation is that the charitable instauration sponsoring the task was issued a cease-and-desist bid 2 years agone by the California lawyer general’s office. All charitable enactment was halted, a prohibition that has not been lifted.

That presumably includes the program to physique a museum, sculpture garden, visiting creator residences and a abstraction for assemblage engagement connected a 2.5-acre parcel of vacant onshore dotted with scrub not acold from the nationalist park. A signed 2023 colony statement with the Shane Townley Arts Foundation, the radical down the project, referred to arsenic STAF successful the state’s Department of Justice documents, is unambiguous successful disallowing the existent depository project.

The Alien Robot Museum — ARM — is simply a store billed arsenic a Joshua Tree Art Museum "community outreach program."

The instauration agreed to question written support from the lawyer wide “prior to reviving STAF, starting a caller enactment oregon soliciting oregon holding charitable assets.” Fines of $8,000 were waived with the pledge.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Nicole Kennedy, the lawyer successful the state’s registry of charitable trusts who issued the bid and besides signed the July settlement, declined to comment. The Times reviewed the registry’s broad database of documents related to the case. Written support to resume STAF activities is not among them.

STAF was founded successful Orange County arsenic a California nonprofit successful 2013. The cease-and-desist bid was issued owed to a nonaccomplishment to record the required yearly authorities fiscal reports connected its charitable activities.

Federally, the foundation’s taxation returns for calendar twelvemonth 2024 declared much than $545,000 successful contributions and grants. Assets for the anterior year, 2023, are listed astatine conscionable implicit $338,000. The root of the $207,000 maturation aft the colony statement was signed is not identified.

A nationalist instauration is required to record a Schedule A signifier to amusement however it qualifies arsenic a tax-exempt foundation with the IRS. STAF describes its ngo arsenic supporting “creativity and creator expression,” particularly for children’s creation education, arsenic good arsenic assisting successful providing funds for surviving artists. But Schedule A connected its 2024 taxation return, arsenic good arsenic those for the erstwhile 2 years, alternatively marks a container that identifies STAF arsenic “a church, normal of churches, oregon relation of churches.”

Reached by phone, instauration president Shane Townley, a creator and Mission Viejo assemblage owner, said helium was unaware of the religion designation connected the 3 IRS forms. (As STAF president, Townley, 52, received compensation of $48,000 successful 2023 and 2024; nary different officers, trustees oregon employees are identified connected the taxation returns.) STAF’s accountant has present prepared amended Schedule A records for 2024, 2023 and 2022, deleting the religion reference; copies were provided to The Times.

Opposite the"Welcome to Joshua Tree" sign, a 2.5-acre parcel of onshore is the intended tract for the caller creation museum.

A large beforehand leafage communicative successful a caller Sunday variation of the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported that STAF is “actively raising funds to implicit the project’s archetypal phase,” which includes the plan of an eco-friendly dome to beryllium utilized arsenic an creation accumulation space. Asked astir the settlement’s prohibitions against “soliciting oregon holding charitable assets,” Townley said the published accusation was incorrect, and that the foundation’s lawyer would beryllium moving with the lawyer general’s bureau to reconstruct its progressive presumption earlier fundraising begins.

“In fact, our attorney’s going aft it close now,” helium said.

Joshua Tree is location to a sizable assemblage of artists, respective of them of planetary standing. It has continued to turn since the pandemic.

The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Museum of Assemblage Art was established successful 1999 to sphere and showcase the inventive sculpture of the precocious L.A. artist, who died astatine 86 successful 2004. His enactment was the taxable of “Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada,” a wide admired 2015 survey accumulation astatine the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

High Desert Test Sites, the erstwhile location and workplace of creator Andrea Zittel, hosts site-related creation commissions and moving residencies — including a existent 1 by lensman An-My Lê, a MacArthur Foundation fellow. “Andrea Zittel: Critical Space,” a 2007 accumulation astatine L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, featured her installation sculptures exploring home subjects.

Both the Purifoy depository and High Desert Test Sites are a abbreviated thrust from the projected JTAM tract connected onshore Townley said helium acquired with his wife, Yeslin, successful 2022. So is the nationalist park’s visitant center, the westbound entranceway to a tract that attracts 3 cardinal visitors annually. A caller creation depository mightiness marque for an added taste tourism lure, but don’t expect 1 anytime soon — billboard oregon not.