Significance for Culture

The remodeled Laguna Art Museum will reopen Tuesday. It is not on the grand scale of the county’s major cultural event of this year, or any year--the opening next Monday of the Orange County Performing Arts Center. But it has its own special significance for culture in the county.

The “new” art museum--which opened in 1929, a decade after Laguna Beach emerged as an art colony--is the oldest cultural institution in Orange County. The $2.2-million remodeling, which more than doubles the exhibition space, represents the first extensive expansion of any of the county’s three major museums. The museum now not only has much-needed space for its large collection of historical California art, but also can book more traveling exhibits--such as the Elmer Bischoff exhibition, now in Washington and due in Laguna in November.

The Laguna Art Museum encourages the creativity of Southern California artists by putting special emphasis on exhibits of their work. We encourage the community to support that effort and to visit the museum and its reopening exhibitions of the “Early Artists in Laguna Beach: The Impressionists” and the “California Contemporary: Works from the Security Pacific Collection.” They are good examples of the fine work of regional artists and the museum’s support of them.