IRVINE CO. WILL UNDERWRITE 10 ART EXHIBITIONS

Newport Harbor Art Museum will receive $1 million over the next 10 years from the Irvine Co. for a series of major annual exhibits, it was announced Tuesday.

The gift was announced in conjunction with the opening of a retrospective of the works of contemporary realist Wayne Thiebaud. The Thiebaud exhibit, sponsored by a previously announced $100,000 gift from the Irvine Co., is the first of a series of 10 exhibits that the company’s pledge will underwrite at the museum through 1994.

“A strong and vital museum is a critical part of the cultural and educational development of the city of Newport Beach and we’re happy to help fulfill the museum’s commitment to the cultural life of all of Orange County,” Irvine Co. President Thomas H. Nielsen said. The company owns the business and shopping complex in which the museum is situated.

Museum director Kevin Consey said there are plans to mount an exhibit entitled “Surrealism Into Abstraction” in the late summer of 1986. “The exhibit will feature works by American and European painters of the ‘40s and ‘50s, including major pieces by Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, (Mark) Rothko, (Adolph) Gottlieb, (Joan) Miro and will travel to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Whitney Museum in New York,” Consey said. “It is still unconfirmed, but that is the quality and scale of exhibits we are talking about. Beyond that, nothing is set.”