Sponsors Paint a Rosy Picture, but Will Gallery Draw?

The champagne will flow tonight at the gala opening of a new gallery called ARTSPACE, the latest effort in the Cultural Foundation’s seven-year struggle to bring art to the San Fernando Valley.

Somewhat less assured is the flow of art-loving attendees willing to part with $150 each.

Rufino Tamayo, the 81-year-old Mexican artist whose works are featured in the Woodland Hills gallery’s premiere exhibition, is scheduled to appear, as are Mayor Tom Bradley and John Gavin, former U. S. ambassador to Mexico. But as of Wednesday, only 150 people invited to the opening had confirmed their attendance, according to foundation officials.

The $40,000 cost of mounting the exhibit--which includes opening night champagne and hors d’oeuvres, security and insurance--was “nearly all underwritten,” according to foundation executive director Madeleine Landry. The May Co. donated $20,000; the city Cultural Affairs Dept. added $5,000, and there have been “several smaller contributions,” Landry said.

Yet the foundation had hoped to raise $75,000 in ticket sales. The shortfall reflects the group’s history of unsuccessful fund raising; during the past seven years, it has banked less than 1% of its $72-million goal.

It remains to be seen how well the six-week Tamayo exhibit achieves the foundation’s additional goal of increasing its profile and credibility.

Earlier this summer, the foundation staged the Pacifica Festival, a two-day event held in Warner Park that offered music, dance, food and crafts of Pacific Rim countries from Japan to Peru. The festival drew only a third of the anticipated 15,000 people and angered vendors, who lost money, and neighbors of the park, who resented its being fenced.

Linda Kinnee, hired last December to direct fund raising for the foundation, termed the troubled Pacifica event a good example of the foundation’s basic problem.

‘Fabulous’ Entertainment

“If you talk to the people who went, they’ll tell you the entertainment was fabulous,” she said. “The quality was there. But we didn’t get the word out well enough, and also it just takes time to build the credibility so that people know your events are going to be good.”

Kinnee said the foundation has replaced Stone Hallinan, the public relations company that handled Pacifica, with another firm, Lapin & Rose, which is “getting our message out much better.”

The Tamayo show will gain important credibility for the Cultural Foundation, Kinnee contended.

“The point of the exhibition is to pull in as many people as we can,” she said. “That way, we’ll be better known. There’s a widening effect that needs to take place.”

Landry, who is also a member of the city Cultural Affairs Commission, said the Valley is “starved for art.”

She predicted that ARTSPACE will become a hub for the area’s burgeoning interest in fine arts and said this belief was confirmed by the response to an exhibit, held while the gallery was under construction, in conjunction with the Pacifica Festival.

“We had paintings by two Chinese artists and by five L.A. artists who were born in China,” she said. “We didn’t do a lot of advertising, but it was very interesting the amount of people who came through.”

Landry said Robert Voit, a major owner and developer of commercial property in Warner Center, donated the 4,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Warner Center Marriott Hotel and gave the foundation a three-year lease. Three small foundation offices occupy part of the carpeted, irregularly shaped room, and the gallery occupies the remainder. A movable center divider increases the wall area for hanging works.

Voit has already donated 3,000 square feet of space in another building, little more than a block away, to the San Fernando Valley Arts Council. That group is in its 13th month of exhibiting art at its Warner Center Gallery.

“It seems a little repetitious to have another gallery one block down the street,” said Harriet Sculley, director of the older gallery, “but their focus is much more on established artists. The proximi ty is unfortunate because it confuses people.”

A Community Gallery

She continued, “We’re modeled very much on the municipal gallery in Barnsdall Park. We’ve made an attempt to provide a community gallery with professional artists from around Los Angeles who are not widely known.”

Unlike the arrangement for the ARTSPACE gallery, the Arts Council has no lease and would have to move out of its gallery if the Voit Co. rents the space, she said. A Voit Co. representative declined to discuss the firm’s arrangements with the two nonprofit groups.

The Arts Council is composed of volunteers, whereas the much larger Cultural Foundation has a paid staff of five.

“I don’t think we conflict with them,” ARTSPACE director Sheila Raikow said of the Arts Council gallery. “We would like to show major works. We want to show well-known artists. We want to show the community artists they ordinarily would not see.”

Is there sufficient interest to justify two art galleries in a business district of Woodland Hills? People connected both with ARTSPACE and other galleries think so.

“My God, yes, the Valley is huge,” said Louise Lewis, professor of art history at California State University, Northridge and director of CSUN’s Main Gallery. “There’s always room for more art.”

Lewis said the university runs a satellite gallery at Encino Terrace Center, an office complex, showing mostly work by students. In an arrangement similar to that between the Valley arts groups and the Voit Co., management of the Encino complex donates unused space.

“It has done extremely well,” said Lewis. “Lots of people come in.”

Like ARTSPACE, the 7,500-square-foot Main Gallery at CSUN seeks to present established artists. Students show their work in another, smaller space. The Main Gallery opened in 1972.

Publicity Is Key

“One of our shows that drew very well had Picassos, Braques and Magrittes,” a staff member said. “We had a Michael McMillen exhibition last spring, and 800 people came to the opening. He’s a very, very popular local artist. Publicity is the key as to whether the public turns out.”

Raikow, former owner of a ceramics gallery in Brentwood, said she is not paid for her work as ARTSPACE director. Her husband, Les, an accountant, founded Professionals for the Arts, a fund-raising group that is helping to stage the Tamayo exhibit.

Foundation leaders have several programs planned. One would bring schoolchildren to the gallery. Another--a cooperative venture with museums such as the Getty in Malibu--would arrange bus trips taking Valley residents from ARTSPACE to museum shows.

Foundation officials also plan to use the gallery as a setting when making fund-raising appeals to potential donors. And because the room’s inner wall can be removed, musical performances can be staged.

The Tamayo show will be a tough act to follow, gallery organizers agreed. Raikow said ARTSPACE probably will next offer an exhibition of functional art, now in vogue in the art world.

“This will be a three-dimensional show,” she said. “It will be wood, ceramics and so on, and it will be shown in vignettes. Instead of being hung, the work will be in scenes like tableaux.”

The Tamayo show will open to the public Saturday and run through Oct. 31. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free. The ARTSPACE gallery is at 21800 Oxnard St., Woodland Hills.