MUSEUM IN LAGUNA GETS CURATOR

The Laguna Art Museum has tapped Michael McManus, a scholar specializing in Southern California art and a contributing editor to Art Week magazine, as its new chief curator.

McManus, 34, replaces Mike McGee, who left the Laguna museum recently to become curator of the new Modern Museum of Art in Santa Ana. McManus’ appointment is effective Oct. 19.

“My primary interest is the history of art in the Southern California region all the way back to the beginning of this century and even into the 19th Century,” McManus said in an interview Monday.

McManus received his MFA degree from UC San Diego in 1981, after graduating with a BFA from the Cleveland Art Institute. He was invited to UC San Diego as a regents fellow to pursue the university’s MFA program in critical theory of 19th and 20th-Century art. Since 1983, McManus has been teaching writing at the university.

“This area is a gold mine. In New York, Cleveland and other regions of the country there has been a lot of attention to historic regional artists, but in this area of the country, the scholarship is just starting. That’s something Dr. Otton (museum director William Otton) has been doing a lot, and it’s something I’m very excited about,” McManus said.

“I think in scholarly terms that the Southern California impressionists and the ‘New Deal’ art of the ‘30s is under-recognized,” he added. “People who have been recognized, like Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson, deserve that recognition. But beyond that a lot of other artists who worked along with them, like those in the Laguna Beach art colonies and on the WPA (Works Progress Administraion) murals program deserve more attention in the scholarly limelight. There should be catalogs and books.

“A comprehensive study of Southern California artists should should be presented to the public educationally . . . that’s how I see the educational mission of this museum. A lot of it should be about the contemporary artists, the ones who are here.”

After graduating from UC San Diego, McManus went to work for the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art preparing and mounting exhibitions--experience that he said gave him a solid understanding of the practical side of running an art museum.

“Some museums have run aground financially because (their curators) didn’t know the cost of a sheet of footboard, a pound of nails, a box of spackling powder, or because a project involved so many person-hours that the museum was going to bankruptcy before it was finished,” McManus said. “I don’t think that will happen with me.”