LA JOLLA COLLECTION IN VAULT : MUSEUM FACES UP TO SPACE DILEMMA

Hugh Davies was weaving through the tightly packed vault, pointing out art treasures left and right.

Ellsworth Kelly’s 1963 “Red Blue Green”--a seminal Minimalist painting--hung on one sliding rack, Roy Lichtenstein’s 1971 “Mirror” on another. In a crammed corner, virtually out of sight, stood a new acquisition, Italo Scanga’s towering 1983 painted wood sculpture, “Montecassino: Betrayal of the Intellectuals.”

The youthful director of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art was illustrating the institution’s mixed plight. Blessed with a large permanent collection, the museum has found it increasingly difficult to display much or any of it due to the constraints of space. For 45 years, the museum has occupied a 2.2-acre beachfront site in the idyllic heart of La Jolla, but now Davies and the museum board are contemplating changes--either a major expansion on or near the site, or possibly a relocation of the entire museum to a 5.3-acre bayside peninsula, the G Street “mole,” in downtown San Diego.

“We have probably the strongest collection in this country, outside of New York, of American Minimalist art of the 1960s and ‘70s,” affirmed Davies. “So it’s a tremendous frustration to me, my staff and the board that we can’t share it with the public except on a very limited basis. My goal is to make it available to a larger audience.”

Davies noted that the museum boasts 10,000 square feet of exhibition space but will require double that to show off a significant portion of the permanent collection on a regular basis.

“There are shows coming out that require more space than we have in the entire museum,” Davies said. “But in a larger sense, you need your permanent collection up--it provides important context.”

The looming irony of all this is that much of the collection was acquired during the decade-long tenure of Davies’ predecessor, Sebastian (Lefty) Adler, who also put the museum on the map as a landmark haven for architecture and design exhibitions. Under Adler, the museum’s permanent collection went from $500,000 in value to an estimated $6 million.

Adler also advised a move to a larger, more metropolitan downtown site. But he was fired in 1983 for alleged unethical conduct. Since then, he has been spearheading plans for a new downtown modern art and design museum, the San Diego Arts Center, proposed for a 1986 opening in the renovated shell of the historic Balboa Theatre. Adler and his backers are understandably worried that a move by the La Jolla museum to the proposed bayside site would saturate the downtown museum market--if not nipping support for the San Diego Arts Center in the bud.

La Jolla museum officials are playing down that potential conflict, stressing the preliminary nature of its expansion plans. The museum, which operates at a deficit, could realize $11 million or more from its sale of the La Jolla property, though it may have to dissolve a restriction placed on it in 1941, when the 2.2 acres was deeded over by the Scripps Memorial Hospital exclusively for use as an arts complex.

“We occupy a total of 45,000 square feet, and studies indicate we could double that on our present site,” said Davies. “It would be more than possible to meet all our needs at the present location, and what shouldn’t be overlooked is how effective the museum is right here. Last year we had 100,000 visitors, and our membership has doubled in the last two years. We’re in a strong posture, but we need a 20-year plan.”