When is an art museum not an art museum? Among myriad potential answers is this one: When it’s the Joshua Tree Art Museum.
JTAM is a surprising, even fanciful project at the dusty edge of a barren strip of highway in the San Bernardino County desert. Directly across from the local Chamber of Commerce’s “Welcome to Joshua Tree” sign on the Twentynine Palms Highway, a makeshift billboard declares “JTAM” in tall black letters set over a broad strip of limpid blue. The printed, V-shaped tarp is easily legible to drivers traveling to and from a Joshua Tree National Park visitors center.
However, except for that recently erected sign — plus a website, social media presence and a “community outreach project” named Alien Robot Museum at Art Queen, a nearby bohemian cluster of galleries and souvenir stores — JTAM does not exist. And it may never.
The reason is not for a lack of funding, although the $2 million its founders told a local newspaper they need to make the idea reality is not in hand. The problem is that the charitable foundation sponsoring the project was issued a cease and desist order two years ago by the California attorney general’s office. All charitable activity was halted, a prohibition that has not been lifted.
That presumably includes the plan to build a museum, sculpture garden, visiting artist residences and a space for community engagement on a 2.5-acre parcel of vacant land dotted with scrub not far from the national park. A signed 2023 settlement agreement with the Shane Townley Arts Foundation, the group behind the project, referred to as STAF in the state’s Department of Justice documents, is unambiguous in disallowing the current museum project.
The foundation agreed to seek written permission from the attorney general “prior to reviving STAF, starting a new organization or soliciting or holding charitable assets.” Fines of $8,000 were waived with the pledge.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Nicole Kennedy, the lawyer in the state’s registry of charitable trusts who issued the order and also signed the July settlement, declined to comment. The Times reviewed the registry’s comprehensive database of documents related to the case. Written permission to resume STAF activities is not among them.
STAF was founded in Orange County as a California nonprofit in 2013. The cease-and-desist order was issued due to a failure to file the required annual state financial reports on its charitable activities.
Federally, the foundation’s tax returns for calendar year 2024 declared more than $545,000 in contributions and grants. Assets for the prior year, 2023, are listed at just over $338,000. The source of the $207,000 growth after the settlement agreement was signed is not identified.
A public foundation is required to file a Schedule A form to show how it qualifies as a tax-exempt charity with the IRS. STAF describes its mission as supporting “creativity and artistic expression,” especially for children’s art education, as well as assisting in providing funds for living artists. But Schedule A on its 2024 tax return, as well as those for the previous two years, instead marks a box that identifies STAF as “a church, convention of churches, or association of churches.”
Reached by phone, foundation president Shane Townley, a painter and Mission Viejo gallery owner, said he was unaware of the church designation on the three IRS forms. (As STAF president, Townley, 52, received compensation of $48,000 in 2023 and 2024; no other officers, trustees or employees are identified on the tax returns.) STAF’s accountant has now prepared amended Schedule A records for 2024, 2023 and 2022, deleting the church reference; copies were provided to The Times.
A big front page story in a recent Sunday edition of the Palm Springs Desert Sun reported that STAF is “actively raising funds to complete the project’s first phase,” which includes the design of an eco-friendly dome to be used as an art exhibition space. Asked about the settlement’s prohibitions against “soliciting or holding charitable assets,” Townley said the published information was incorrect, and that the foundation’s lawyer would be working with the attorney general’s office to restore its active status before fundraising begins.
“In fact, our attorney’s going after it right now,” he said.
Joshua Tree is home to a sizable community of artists, several of them of international standing. It has continued to grow since the pandemic.
The Noah Purifoy Outdoor Museum of Assemblage Art was established in 1999 to preserve and showcase the inventive sculpture of the late L.A. artist, who died at 86 in 2004. His work was the subject of “Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada,” a widely admired 2015 survey exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
High Desert Test Sites, the former home and studio of artist Andrea Zittel, hosts site-related art commissions and working residencies — including a current one by photographer An-My Lê, a MacArthur Foundation fellow. “Andrea Zittel: Critical Space,” a 2007 exhibition at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, featured her installation sculptures exploring domestic subjects.
Both the Purifoy museum and High Desert Test Sites are a short drive from the proposed JTAM site on land Townley said he acquired with his wife, Yeslin, in 2022. So is the national park’s visitor center, the west entrance to a site that attracts 3 million visitors annually. A new art museum might make for an added cultural tourism lure, but don’t expect one anytime soon — billboard or not.
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