Grand Year for Galleries

In the year that has passed since the immense expansion of art-gallery space in Los Angelestook place, support of art has been growing in encouraging ways.

The inaugural year of the Robert O. Anderson Building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has seen memberships rise 8% to 83,000, the largest resident membership of any museum in the nation, according to museum officials. Attendance has shown no significant increase, running at about 700,000. The hit of the year was “Russia, the Land, the People,” a collection of 62 paintings from the second half of the 19th Century.

The opening of the permanent Museum of Contemporary Art at 250 S. Grand on Bunker Hill, and the continuation of the Temporary Contemporary at 152 N. Central Ave., saw MOCA memberships increase from 20,000 to a new total of 32,000. About 450,000 visitors to the two museums were counted in the first year of operation for the new museum, compared with 318,500 visitors to the Temporary Contemporary the year before.

Two other developments during the year signaled further extraordinary expansion. The city gave final approval for the J. Paul Getty Center in Brentwood. The new complex will include a major museum that will supplement the existing Getty collection in Malibu. And Norton Simon announced plans to give his rare collection to UCLA--a decision that apparently ensures the future of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and the creation of an additional museum on the Westwood campus of the university.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino also is havingan expansive year, with attendance for the first 11 months of 1987 totaling 460,098--close to the 12-month total for 1986 of 481,843.