EXPANSION CONSIDERED FOR NEWPORT ART MUSEUM

See review on Page 12 of museum’s current exhibit. In search of more space and a more prominent image, directors of the Newport Harbor Art Museum are considering spending from $5 million to $50 million on expansion plans that could include building a larger museum outside Newport Beach.

“Plans are really at a formative stage,” said board President Ray H. Johnson. Museum directors are not expected to decide before early 1986 whether to expand the museum building--a one-story structure next to the Newport Beach Public Library--or move to larger quarters elsewhere.

At their June meeting, board members voted to hire the Oram Group, a New York management consulting firm, to research the depth of financial support available to build a countywide art museum.

Museum officials are considering a wide range of alternatives. “For $5 million you could get a face lift,” said Leon Lyon, a longtime board member. “For $50 million you could get a site (designed) by an internationally famous architect and get a giant endowment and monies for acquiring art and a sculpture garden.”

So far, museum officials have “looked at 50 individual sites from San Clemente to Santa Ana,” said Kevin Consey, the museum’s 34-year-old director. He declined to be specific but said museum directors have not ruled out a move to South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa to be near the $65.5-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, scheduled to open in 1986.

Museum officials also have not ruled out building “on top” of the current structure or adding additional buildings on the two-acre site in Newport Beach.

Both board members and museum staff agree that the museum has outgrown its present 21,000-square-foot site. One major problem is that the museum, with only 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, is unable to exhibit its 1,400-piece permanent collection during other showings.

Potential donors of art are discouraged from giving anything to the permanent collection, said Lyon, who heads the board’s development committee, because their gifts are likely to languish in storage.

Consey described the offices, built in 1977 when the museum had a staff of five, as “a rabbit warren.” (The museum, operating on a $1.4-million budget, currently has 60 full- and part-time employees.) And he pointed out the museum’s lack of an auditorium and adequate screening facilities for its extensive film library.

How much the museum expands will depend on the amount of money directors can raise for such a project. Among the considerations: whether major private and corporate donors will give to a new museum when they are already contributing generously to the South Coast Repertory Theatre and to the new performing-arts center.

The museum was founded in 1962 when a dozen women held an art exhibition in the lobby of the Newport Beach City Hall. In 1977, after continued growth and repeated relocations, the museum moved to its present site, on land donated by the Irvine Co.

“This was a very ambitious step 10 years ago when the area was growing dramatically,” board President Johnson said, “but in a dynamic community like Orange County, change is almost inevitable.”