TWO GRANTS TO HELP COUNTY MUSEUM

The County Museum of Art has received grants to enhance its scholarly publications program and to assist in the installation of the museum’s 20th-Century collection in the new Robert O. Anderson wing.

A permanent endowment matching grant of $300,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will establish the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Publication Endowment Fund. The grant must be matched by $600,000 from other sources within about three years.

The new endowment fund will support scholarly publications on the museum’s collections to make the holdings known and available to scholars, curators, collectors, students and the public.

The second award, a general operating support grant of $75,000 from the Institute of Museum Services, is earmarked for installation of 20th-Century art in the new 115,200-square-foot Anderson Building, slated to open Nov. 23.

Space on two floors of galleries has been allocated to the modern and contemporary collection. Another floor will be used for special loan exhibitions.

For the first time in LACMA’s history, the full range of works--from classic modern ones by Picasso, Matisse, and Braque to contemporary, large-scale works--will be on view.

A new publication, the National Percent for Art Newsletter, compiles quarterly listings of open competitions (for direct purchases and commissions) sponsored by all Percent for Art programs nationwide. This service to professional artists has been generated to assist them with career opportunities available through state, regional, county and city public art programs.

Subscriptions, at $24 a year, are available from the National Percent for Art Newsletter, 311 East 17th Ave., Spokane, Wash. 99203.

A three-day national conference on the subject of “Art in Other Places” is set for Aug. 21-23 at UCLA in Dodd Hall 147.

The 30 participating artists and administrators are engaged in innovative programs in alternative settings, teaching the elderly, prison inmates, the terminally ill, juvenile offenders and the developmentally disabled. Participants include photographer Peter Reiss, choreographer Sarah Elgart, actress Victoria Ann Lewis and Laurie Meadoff, founder of Network Theater International in New York, who conducts multimedia projects involving young people.

The event is sponsored by UCLA Extension’s ARTSREACH program, the California Department of Corrections, the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Information: (213) 825-9493.

San Francisco architect Stanley Saitowitz has been chosen to design UC Riverside’s Museum of Photography, to be relocated in a downtown mall near historic Mission Inn. Saitowitz, who has practiced architecture since 1975, will redesign the former Kress variety store building, a two-floor, 22,000-square-foot facility slated to open in the fall of 1987.

Kurt Forster, an internationally recognized architectural historian, director of the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, and a member of the selection committee described the project:

“As a diamond in the rough, the old Kress store on the mall would challenge any architect’s ingenuity and sense of place. The committee felt that Saitowitz proffered the most interesting and sensitive ideas, both for the rehabilitation of the existing building and the complex problems posed by the displays in a modern museum.”

Relocation of the museum will provide nearly five times the exhibition space available in Watkins House, the museum’s current headquarters, and allow the museum to consolidate its $12-million collection. Plans for the renovation of the Kress building also call for a 300-seat auditorium, library, museum shop, seminar room and a work area for scholars.

In addition to Forster, other members of the selection committee were: Richard C. Rust, university architect; the museum’s director, Charles Desmarais; artist Joe Deal, chairman of UCR’s art program, and Tim Hayes, publisher and editor of the Press-Enterprise newspaper.

Deborah Tufts has been appointed curator of education at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Tufts is an honors graduate of Scripps College with a master’s degree in museum education from George Washington University.

L.A. artists out of town: Painter Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin’s work is included in an international group show of paintings drawings and sculpture at the Claude Bernard Gallery in Paris; another Californian in the show is Robert Arneson.

Santa Barbara painter Hank Pitcher has been invited to participate in an exhibition titled “Movietone Muse,” organized by critic/curator Gerard Haggerty for 1 Penn Plaza in New York and scheduled to open in January.

Los Angeles artist Barbara Edelstein was asked to be part of the National Studio Program sponsored by the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, P.S. 1, in New York.