Museum Plans Draw Interest, Speculation

Port commissioners are interested, La Jollans are nervous and backers of a downtown San Diego art center are running scared.

The source of all the fuss is a proposal to move the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art from La Jolla to a waterfront site at G Street in downtown San Diego. The plan is in preliminary stages--so preliminary that some commissioners of the San Diego Unified Port District, whose land the museum may lease, only learned of it by reading the newspaper Friday.

Still, lots of people, from port commissioners to City Council members to arts critics, said they are taking the proposed move seriously.

“It’s a very interesting proposal. I look forward to studying it,” said Delton Reopelle, a port commissioner from National City. Ben Cohen, a port commissioner from Coronado, agreed.

But several prominent La Jollans said they were worried as well as interested. If the museum moved, they said, it could leave a vacuum in La Jolla’s cultural life.

“Several months back, I heard a former president of the (museum) board say that the museum could thrive more if it was associated with being a San Diego museum instead of a La Jolla museum,” City Councilman Bill Mitchell recalled. “At the time, I said, ‘I hope they don’t take it out of La Jolla.’ ”

Mitchell said he still thinks the museum should stay. “Maybe more of the masses will go there (downtown),” he said. “But there’s more of a select person in La Jolla--more of a person who appreciates the arts.”

La Jolla Town Council President Kenneth King spoke Friday of “the great loss” to La Jolla if the museum were to move.

The modern art museum, along with nearby churches and the women’s club across the street, has become “really the cultural center” of La Jolla, King said. “It would be a real tragedy if they moved all the way out there and the building were changed to another facility.”

Still, King wasn’t sure anyone would protest if the museum left. “I’m not sure the people in La Jolla have any strong feeling about the museum,” he said. “The vast majority are pleased the museum is in the community and is a community resource. But I don’t know if the La Jolla Town Council will get enough interest and steam to fight against the move.”

Steam has been building, however, on a different front--from backers of another downtown modern art museum, the San Diego Arts Center, which has been planning to open in the old Balboa Theatre at 4th Avenue and E Street in 1986.

Arts Center proponents doubt whether two modern art museums, several blocks from one another, can thrive. Some Arts Center backers spent Friday taking that message to City Council members--asking them to fight the La Jolla challenger and to write letters on the center’s behalf.

Councilman Uvaldo Martinez, a strong Arts Center proponent, said he plans to talk to port commissioners about the center’s concerns.

“The problem I have with (the La Jolla museum) is that it puts the museum in a real competitive situation with the Arts Center,” Martinez said. “There’s some apprehension.”

But one council aide offered a different perspective. “People at the San Diego Arts Center are panicking,” he said. He added that he wasn’t sure they needed to worry.

“Having two museums downtown would raise the level of interest in art downtown,” he suggested. After all, he said, “what the heck would Muhammad Ali do without Joe Frazier?”

Others interested in the La Jolla museum’s plans also said a second museum downtown might boost interest in all San Diego museums.

“I certainly would welcome them as a neighbor, and downtown would be better for their involvement,” said Steve Brezzo, director of the San Diego Museum of Art.