Newport Harbor Art Museum

The Newport Harbor Art Museum has announced plans to double its gallery space by expanding into the 14,000-square-foot Newport Beach Public Library next door, signaling the museum's decision to finally abandon long-cherished hopes of a high-profile new home. The library building--acquired from the city by the Irvine Co., which is donating it to the museum--will be vacated next spring when the library moves into new quarters on Avocado Avenue.

Fashion Island in Newport Beach may be the prettiest mall around, but resist the siren song of worldly goods and you can find other satisfactions on and beyond the perimeter of Newport Center Drive. Female figures currently are the focus at Orange County Museum of Art; there are museum-esque nudes on the walls at the nearby Ritz restaurant. Target Newport Beach Library for books; throw darts at Muldoon's Dublin Pub.

Newport Harbor Art Museum officials unveiled plans today for a dramatic $50-million museum that will be one of the most expensive in California. The 87,000-square-foot "flying carpet" museum, to be built on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, will be a low-slung, massive structure with an undulating roof. Designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, best known for his multicolored, spaceship-like Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum is scheduled for completion in late 1992.

When the Orange County Museum of Art marks its first anniversary on Saturday, it can celebrate without reservation its financial strength and mushrooming attendance. It still has a way to go, though, toward reaching its artistic goals, arts observers and museum officials say. "Our record of accomplishment is truly extraordinary," said board President Charles D. Martin.

In the highly competitive world of fine art--where quality artists can languish as no-names for years--it is uncommon for unknowns to be honored with solo exhibitions in major museums. Such spotlight exposure usually is reserved for established artists whose reputations legitimize the time and expense needed to mount such a show.

It's probably true that art with a social or political message preaches mostly to the converted. But in recent years, many artists who feel passionately about issues--among them war, racism, neighborhood gentrification, poverty, sexism, political chicanery and nuclear power--have gone out of their way to make sure their messages reach a broad public.

Six renowned chefs combined their talents to create a masterpiece Sunday at the Newport Harbor Art Museum's Art of Dining IX. Approximately 420 guests, many of them connoisseurs of food, wine and art, attended the Exhibition of Culinary Art at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach. The $500-per-person black-tie gala grossed a record $620,000 for the museum, thanks in part to a successful live auction and generous underwriters.

Using books as his principal material, Buzz Spector makes sculpture that is quiet, unassuming and ruminative in the extreme. The experience of looking at a small exhibition of his work at the Newport Harbor Art Museum through March 18 is akin to the half-searching, half-idle experience of rummaging through a neighborhood bookstore--but with a telling difference. Carved, torn, stacked, boxed, framed, painted over and, in a few cases, converted into pedestals, his books cannot be read.

Max Schreck. My, there's poetry in that name. Wreck, dreck, Schreck. .. To lovers of the vampire mystique, however, Max Schreck is lyrical history, pure and simple. Pure as a cup of blood, simple as the word "Nosferatu." Schreck was the first Dracula, in 1922, when F.W. Murnau's silent film "Nosferatu" was released.

On top of recent financial problems and efforts to recover from a long absence of top administrators, the Newport Harbor Art Museum is now in jeopardy of losing state arts council funding. The Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove also may not receive a California Arts Council grant, and four other prominent local arts groups may get smaller grants this year as a result of lowered rankings by council review panels announced this week.

With the death last week of Jack Shea, Newport Harbor Art Museum trustee extraordinaire, Orange County lost a member of an increasingly endangered species: business people who support art primarily because it is their passion. Shea, who died Feb. 5 at age 74 in Palm Springs after a long illness, was president of the museum's board from 1978-81 and 1986-87.

Two decades ago, the Newport Harbor Art Museum proudly unveiled a stark new concrete building in Newport Center, the museum's first home of its own after 15 years in rented spaces. Today, the building is the focus of another public opening, this one celebrating a $1.8-million expansion and renovation that more than doubles its gallery space.

Opponents of the Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger presented the Laguna Beach City Council on Tuesday with confidential documents that they say show trustees fraudulently engineered the merger. "We suggest that no museum anywhere can be created on a foundation of fraud, deceit, arrogance and greed," said Vern Spitaleri, president of Motivated Museum Members, the group filing suit to reverse the merger.

Clearly, the biggest art event of 1996 in Orange County was the merger of the Laguna Art Museum and the Newport Harbor Art Museum. But not everyone is cheering the birth of the Orange County Museum of Art. Some of us believe the Laguna trustees consistently failed to comprehend the special character of the Laguna community and the role the nearly 80-year-old museum played in it.

A judge on Thursday set a March 10 trial date in the closely watched lawsuit seeking to overturn the recent merger of the Newport Harbor and Laguna art museums. Superior Court Judge Raymond J. Ikola in Santa Ana also denied a request by the consolidated Orange County Museum of Art to dismiss the suit, instead granting merger opponents more time to prepare their arguments. "Despite the heat and fury generated in this case so far, the case is still young," Ikola wrote in a court brief.

Serious discussions have resumed to merge two of Orange County's oldest and most prominent art museums--possibly to be located in the South Coast Metro center as a visual arts equivalent to the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The catalyst for the renewed discussions to combine the Laguna Art Museum and the Newport Harbor Art Museum into what might be called the Orange County Museum of Art has been the rise of Laguna trustee Gilbert LeVasseur.

Trustees and supporters of Laguna Art Museum signed a much-debated agreement Wednesday that brings the proposed merger of the Laguna and Newport Harbor Art museums one critical step closer. Newport Harbor trustees still must accept the plan, which keeps the Laguna museum open if the merger takes place. And, even if that board approves, the merger itself must be ratified by April 20 by the Laguna museum's 1,400 members.

The latest effort to torpedo the Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger has failed, but merger opponents say the fight still isn't over. A referendum to reverse the merger was defeated narrowly 823 to 796 in a vote by the general membership of the consolidated Orange County Museum of Art, according to Charles D. Martin, OCMA president.

A request to reverse the new Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger was denied Thursday by a Superior Court judge, who told merger opponents that they were "just too darn late." The opponents said they would appeal. "We are more united than ever," said Fitz Maurice of Laguna Beach, vice president of the Motivated Museum Members opposition group. She said the ruling by Judge Raymond J. Ikola "has strengthened our conviction."