Art Museum’s Backers Paint a Bright Future

Even as they celebrated their newly expanded Newport Beach galleries, leaders of the Orange County Museum of Art alluded to a museum they hope to build near the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

That was the buzz at the gala Thursday that marked the $1.8-million expansion and renovation of the former Newport Harbor Art Museum.

“You have to walk before you run--this is the first step,” noted museum vice chairman Gil LeVasseur, one of the people who envisioned the merger of the Newport Harbor and Laguna art museums. “Now we need to provide wonderful art exhibitions, build the demand for art in the community. We expect that demand to carry us, guide us to what we need to do in the future for a possible larger site.”

More than 200 of the museum’s trustees and major donors gathered at the Newport Beach location to launch an exhibit by artist Joe Goode and honor Joan and Donald Beall--whose donation of $500,000 was the centerpiece of the “From Vision to Reality” expansion campaign.

Museum chairman Chuck Martin hinted of the museum’s dreams for a new, larger facility when he addressed the black-tie crowd: “We will be aggressively expanding our efforts to win the hearts of the people of Orange County on a broad basis. . . . Through this, we seek to nurture and develop an appreciation and love for the visual arts in our community,” he said, “and to provide that community with a superior venue for the celebration of the visual arts.”

Martin continued: “We see the Orange County Museum of Art as the third leg in the cultural triangle of our community, complementing the Performing Arts Center in music and dance and South Coast Repertory in theater. The visual arts completes the triangle.”

During her remarks, Joan Beall--who chaired the museum expansion fund-raising campaign--also spoke of the future: “So many people have worked so hard, and I feel this is just symbolic of the wonderful things that are going to happen in the future,” she said. “We want to address the county with our art museum, and this [Newport Beach site] will allow us to do that better, and then, in the future, even better.”

Also among guests was museum supporter Erin Trunel, whose Newport Beach home was the site of several dinners where the museum merger was discussed.

“I invited eight people for dinner to talk about what we could do for the visual arts in Orange County,” she said. “We had 10 more dinners, and that was the end of our group; we had our idea for the merger plan.

“My real dream is to see a museum in a location where all of Orange County can take advantage--a bigger museum in the heart of the county.” When? “Oh, 2002, 2003, maybe?”

Longtime and new donors alike mingled in the museum’s lobby area, where the gala--chaired by Teri Kennady of Laguna Beach--was staged. Here, dining tables were topped with colorful ceramic vases created by artist Mary Burns of Orange.

Among those ooohing and ahhhing over the scene was Jane Lawson of Newport Beach, one of the former Newport Harbor Art Museum’s 13 founders.

“This is very exciting,” said Lawson, who gave her age as “over” 80. “When we opened the museum in 1962, we didn’t have a big night like this. We had an afternoon tea and blew out all the lights in the pavilion when we plugged in the coffee pot.”

On Thursday, guests sipped champagne from crystal flutes, dined on breast of pheasant and viewed 43 works by Goode, spanning 25 years of the artist’s career. Also on display were 150 pieces from the museum’s permanent collection.

Museum director Naomi Vine seemed to speak for the crowd when she spoke privately about her vision for the museum: “In a perfect world, the Orange County Museum of Art would someday be the equivalent of the Whitney or Guggenheim [museums] in New York. Both have focused collections; both have ongoing series of very exciting, can’t-miss exhibitions--exhibitions people feel like they can’t live without seeing.

“ ‘Wow!’ is what we want people to say when they come here.”

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Others attending included Michael Botwinick--project coordinator for the museum expansion; museum curator Bruce Guenther; Twyla Reed Martin; Tom and Marilyn Nielsen; Barbara and Jim Glabman; Irene and William Mathews; Victoria LeVasseur; Jo Ellen Qualls; Jeanne and David Tappan; and Tom and Marilyn Sutton.

Also, Margaret and Robert Sprague; Molly and Leon Lyon; Alison and Bud Frenzel; Gerald and Carolyne Johnson; Binnie Beaumont; Gene and Pat Hancock; Darrel and Marsha Grinberg Anderson; Byron and Ronnie Allumbaugh; and James Pick and Rosalyn Laudati.

The next museum gala is an “Art of Dining” benefit May 18 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach. Special guests will be ceramist Viola Frey and art collector David Rockefeller Sr.