GREYSTONE TO HOUSE COLLECTION : WEISMAN GIVEN OK ON MANSION LEASE

After a public debate peppered equally by hissing and clamorous applause, the Beverly Hills City Council Tuesday night approved a proposal to transform the city’s historic Greystone mansion into a museum housing the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation’s multimillion dollar collection of contemporary art.

The city council voted 4-1 to accept the Weisman Foundation lease, ending a year of convoluted negotiations and political wrangling. The resolution is considered a victory for the Los Angeles art community, which could have lost the highly regarded collection to another city, as it did the Hirshhorn Collection of modern and contemporary art to Washington in 1964.

Weisman, millionaire head of mid-Atlantic Toyota and a leading art collector, will install the collection (valued at $15 million-$25 million) in the landmark estate in 1988, according to Weisman curator Nora Halpern.

The constantly growing collection contains about 250 paintings and sculptures in Abstract Expressionist, Pop and more recent styles by such luminaries as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, David Hockney and Ellsworth Kelly.

Beverly Hills Mayor Edward I. Brown, a staunch supporter of the conversion throughout the negotiations, expressed satisfaction after the resolution was passed: “I recently saw a movie called ‘Down and Out in Beverly Hills.’ Well, now it’s ‘Up and In in Beverly Hills.’ This is a historic occasion, a dream becoming a reality.”

In a statement issued by his spokesman, Weisman thanked the “many, many people--in particular Fred Nicholas, and the members of the board of the Greystone Foundation,” the mayor and Beverly Hills City Council members, and the great number of private citizens and distinguished leaders of Southern California’s cultural community” who helped “win approval for my proposal to create a museum of 20th-Century art at Greystone.”

Under terms of the agreement, negotiated by council appointee Frederick M. Nicholas, president of the Greystone Foundation, the city of Beverly Hills will lease Greystone to the Weisman Foundation for $1 a year for 55 years. A non-obligatory clause provides for an “agreement to agree” to a 30-year renewal.

The Weisman Foundation will pay for operation of the new museum, placing $1.5 million a year into a trust fund for that purpose. The foundation also will pay $6 million-$8 million to restore the 55-room estate to its “original splendor.” The city will pay $2 million-$3 million to bring the building up to earthquake-safety standards and to make it accessible to disabled visitors.

The foundation also will pay for maintenance of the mansion, and share upkeep of the surrounding grounds with the city.

Entrance fees, to be used for operating and maintenance costs only, will be charged, and parking reservations will be required for admission to avert traffic and parking congestion in Trousdale, the exclusive neighborhood surrounding the 18.6-acre estate at Loma Vista Drive and Doheny Road.

More than 150 people crowded the council chambers, including both leading figures on the local art scene and Trousdale residents, during the often-heated five-hour hearing.

Art experts urging acceptance of the lease and affirming the artistic value of the Weisman collection included John F. Gordon and Robert Gray, deans of the USC and UCLA schools of fine arts, respectively; Alan Sieroty, former state senator and current president of the Cultural Affairs Commission of Los Angeles, and Julia Lazar, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The council would be “foolish to overlook the stature that this collection would bring to the whole country, as well as to Beverly Hills,” warned Lazar before the vote. “Within 25 years the (monetary and artistic) value of the (collection’s) works will probably quadruple.” Other proponents read letters of support from Mayor Tom Bradley; Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art; Howard N. Fox, the County Museum of Art’s curator of contemporary art, and Stephanie Barron, curator of 20th-Century art at the County Museum of Art.

Those voicing opposition to the conversion of Greystone included Otto Kaus, former California Supreme Court justice, and Alan Berlin, a businessman and treasurer of the Trousdale Home Owners Assn.

Detractors’ objections focused less on artistic merit of the collection than on “serious problems” involving numerous lease technicalities and worries about the museum’s impact on the neighborhood.

Expressed concerns ranged from an assumption that the 35-page lease had not been reviewed by a “competent lawyer” (“at least eight attorneys” evaluated the contract, according to council member Donna Ellman), to sentiments that the length of the 55-year lease was “excessive,” the $1-a-year fee a “giveaway,” or that gaining greater financial returns from Beverly Hills’ “greatest asset” would better benefit the city.

Council member and Vice Mayor Charlotte Spadaro, who delivered the single no vote, and has led the fight against Weisman’s lease proposal, continued her vigilant campaign Tuesday. She raised objections and questions before the vote, from concern for proper historic restoration (provided for in the lease) to a request for confidential financial statements from the Weisman Foundation.

The Weisman Foundation collection is now traveling in two segments in Europe and Asia. It is scheduled to return to the United States in mid-1987, where it will be shown at museums throughout the country before its installation at Greystone.

The mansion has been vacant since 1980, when the $1-a-year lease that the American Film Institute had held since 1969 expired.