What a week!The upper reaches of the...

What a week!

The upper reaches of the Villa Montezuma Museum were seriously damaged by fire early Tuesday, and its exhibition, “Textures of Black America,” representing works by 25 black artists, was severely damaged.

The building, San Diego Historical Society director Richard Esparza hopes, will be restored in time for next year’s celebration of the centennial of the handsome, ornate structure, which was built for a residence in 1887 by early San Diego cultural figure Jesse Shepard. But the incinerated original art is irreplaceable.

There’s further bad news: Two galleries, both in operation in San Diego just since November, have announced their closing within the next few weeks.

Owners Drew Johnson and Renee Linson sent out notices of the closing of Santa Fe West Galleries (622 5th Ave.) last week not long after a gala reception for many of their artists who traveled here from New Mexico. Johnson, who has been a building contractor and furniture craftsman, regarded his enterprise as very much like “running a small museum.”

Little curatorial sense, however, guided the selection of works for exhibitions, which were heavily decorative.

Johnson faults locals for their indifference to what the gallery offers. “In Santa Fe,” he said, “people buy couches to go with their art. Here people buy art to go with their couches.”

But he said the art market is weakening everywhere. “It’s also suffering in Santa Fe, because the oil derricks in Texas aren’t pumping.”

Among the stronger artists in the current group exhibition are Paul Shapiro with landscapes in bold forms and expressive color, Kristina Hagman (Larry Hagman’s daughter) with strong figurative works, Douglas Atwill with wildly gestural landscapes and Dennis Culver with technically refined studies of objects in gouache on paper.

There is also an attractive selection of Navajo rugs and blankets, about which Johnson said, “We’re trying to survive on them. Wouldn’t you know it? The pastels sold first!” The closing of the Santa Fe West Galleries is a loss to the balance of the local art market. The quality of the work exhibited there has been superior to what is to be found generally in commercial galleries in Horton Plaza. The gallery will close April 28.

Bunny Conlon of the Conlon Grenfell Gallery (527 4th Ave.), who also, incidentally, is from Santa Fe, blames her misfortune on “a simple lack of funds.” She does not fault a lack of interest among local collectors. “Sales have been better than I anticipated for a first year,” she said.

A decisive factor was the withdrawal of Richard Grenfell from the partnership. Conlon lacks the resources to carry on alone.

The loss of the gallery from the local art scene is especially severe for area artists Conlon was featuring increasingly in her very handsome spaces.

Announced exhibitions of works by Robert Sanchez of San Diego and Roberta Isenberg of Laguna Beach, both artists of exceptional talent who merit the attention of a San Diego audience, will not take place.

The closing exhibition of the Conlon Grenfell Gallery features Gail Roberts’ painted assemblages, as a group titled “Tower Guards.”

Roberts collects an extraordinarily mixed bag of objects--a guitar, a plastic gorilla, dolls, toy pistols, etc., for her works. You find it. She’ll use it.

Generally, after having assembled the high-relief discards in the center of her canvases, she paints the very active compositions in high-key colors and the fields in swirling pastels. Among the works exhibited, “Tree Tower” is especially interesting because the objects are collected in two groups, one to the right and one to the left, rather than centered. In “Diver” the three-dimensional elements are pushed to the upper right-hand quadrant but balanced by the patterning of a low relief sisal rug affixed to the surface of the rest of the canvas.

The closing of the Conlon Grenfell Gallery is very sad, not least of all because of the absence of Bunny Conlon herself.

The Gail Roberts’ exhibition continues through March 29.

Earth Bound Gallery (835 G St.) is showing 42 photographs by television news broadcaster Reed Galin, formerly of KFMB-TV and now with NBC in Los Angeles. Many of the images in the exhibition, titled “Land, and Other Escapes,” will find approval because of their resemblance to the work of Ansel Adams, as in “Storm over Paxon Lake, Alaska,” for example, with its dramatic contrasts in a full range of values.

Galin is more than competent as a photographer, but few of his works possess artistic poetry or magic.

“Desert Center, California,” however, is a standout with its shallow, flat foreground and a complex clouded sky that seems to arch into the viewer’s space. A Texaco station and two giant trucks are like toys in this bleak environment.

Also notable is “Eureka Men’s Club,” a candid portrait of four derelicts sharing a bottle of red.

Galin’s landscapes are stronger than his studies of people, and his work in black and white is stronger than that in color.

The exhibition continues through March 31.

At the Spectrum Gallery (744 G St.) Paul White’s “Salt Creek Visions” are skillfully crafted, imaginative reworkings of Native American mask themes and Susan Flowers’ appropriately titled “Surfaces” are decorative abstractions. The two-person exhibition continues through March 29.