A.V. INDIAN MUSEUM GETS FUNDING TO UPDATE CATALOGUE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

Antelope Valley Indian Museum has received a $127,000 grant to put an electronic catalogue of its 10,000 artifacts on the Internet for perusal by schoolchildren, teachers, researchers and the general public.

The money comes from the Getty Grant Program, which has given grants for similar projects to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, and the Norton Simon Museum, all aimed at putting visual arts collections on-line.

``We feel that the awarding of this grant validates the museum's mission,'' said Beryl Amspoker, president of the Friends of the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, the volunteer support group that was the actual recipient of the grant.

Besides a catalogue bearing photographs, descriptions and explanation of individual artifacts, the museum web site will contain games, moving images and other features aimed at children, plus lesson plans and study guides for use by teachers.

The first of those packages will describe the Antelope Valley's prehistoric position on a trade corridor between coastal Indians and Indians of the American southwest.

The second will talk about the folk-art aspect of the museum building, a whimsical structure in the style of a Swiss chalet. It was built in 1928 by artist H. Arden Edwards as a home for his family, in part out of material scavenged from movie sets where he worked. The collection was started by Edwards and expanded by valley artist Grace Oliver after she bought Edwards' home and collections in 1939. The museum was sold to the state in 1979.

The museum began cataloguing its collection electronically in 1992. About 3,000 items remain to be catalogued.

The museum's anthropological collection includes basketry, stone and bone tools, shell ornaments and other Native American artifacts, focused mostly on the Indians of the Great Basin.