SHOWDOWN SET ON ARTS PLAN

There will be a showdown at City Hall when the city’s arts plan comes up for approval Monday, the president of the Combined Organization for the Visual Arts vowed this week.

COVA mailed letters to members of the San Diego City Council Monday protesting what itcalled a conflict of interest between COMBO--the private arts fund-raising agency--and council members. Included with the letter is a cartoon showing a rotund COMBO executive director Robert Arnhym with Councilman Mike Gotch sitting as a puppet on Arnhym’s knee. The cartoon is labeled “COMBO Bob’s Art Lobby and Puppet Show” and includes a caricature of Gotch’s executive assistant Diane Annala, a member of COMBO’s board of directors, leaning over Arnhym’s shoulder.

At issue is a plan that addresses the community’s arts needs. It was prepared by consultants for the city’s Public Arts Advisory Board. Artist and COVA president Jennifer Spencer claims that COMBO wants the arts plan defeated because it will dilute COMBO’s power.

Arnhym was out of town earlier this week; however, Sharon LeeMaster, who is COMBO’s development director, said, “COMBO feels very comfortable with what it’s doing. (The arts advisory panel) has no power to distribute funds. At this time it is not an issue. The issue is whether it’s an acceptable arts plan.”

The City Council has twice delayed voting on the plan, which is being rushed through council to meet a California Arts Council grant deadline that has been extended to April 11.

Annala brushed aside Spencer’s claims about her own influence on Gotch and said that the councilman understands the arts issues in San Diego. “If I’m an influence on his opinion at all on the arts, it’s because I have a degree from Harvard in arts management and 10 years experience in management,” Annala said.

Annala said she believed the plan would be approved. In the last few days, the plan was rewritten to meet all objections voiced against it by council members, a city staff member familiar with the plan said.

ARBOR TALK: The talking trees of UC San Diego officially join the Stuart Collection in inaugural ceremonies between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Friday. Terry Allen’s mixed media installation of lead-wrapped and sound-wired eucalyptus trees will be the latest addition to the Stuart Collection. Allen, who lives in Fresno, will speak about his concept for the installation, called “Trees” and about his thoughts on music, language and performance.

Two of the trees have been wired for sound and will broadcast recordings of poetry and music, including Navajo chants, artist William T. Wiley singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and a Thai band. The trees were felled to make room for a new building on campus. They join such works in the collection as Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Sun God,” Richard Fleischner’s granite “La Jolla Project” of references to architectural elements and Robert Irwin’s “Two Running Violet V Forms.” The three trees were installed last year in the grove near the main library at UCSD.

BAY THEATER: The Coronado Playhouse has five years to vacate its 40-year-old home,the Coronado City Council decreed earlier this month. A master plan for the development of Glorietta Bay calls for the theater to be razed and its site used for open space.

The theater’s management and the Coronado City Council expect the thespians to move their operations to an abandoned National Guard armory about a block west of the theater. But a lease agreement must be worked out. Theater officials estimate it will cost $500,000 to renovate the armory.

Also in Coronado, “Western Landscape,” a 6 1/2-by-4-foot painting by Thomas Hill, has been sold for $125,000 by the school district to an Oakland art gallery. The family of Coronado millionaire John D. Spreckels donated the painting to the school district in 1956 along with a second painting. Funds from the sale of the artwork will go into a special trust with the interest used for the school district’s arts programs, an official said.

ARTBEATS: Alan R. Ziter has been hired as executive director of the San Diego Theatre League. Ziter, who implemented and managed the Chicago Theatre League’s HOT TIX ticket centers and other ticket operations, will set up and run ARTS/TIX, a similar operation, in San Diego . . . The San Diego Artists’ Resource Center received $25,000 to produce an arts resource directory. The funds came from a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to the City of San Diego which is administered by COMBO . . .

The Los Angeles Arts Council recently presented the Richard Burton Memorial Award, with a $5,000 cash prize, to Jonathan Fried, a third-year graduate acting student at UCSD.