Newport Art Museum Curator Picked for Otis/Parsons Post

Anne B. Ayres, associate curator of exhibitions and collections at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, will be named today as director of the Otis/Parsons Art Institute Exhibitions Center.

She succeeds Al Nodal, who recently became director of the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. Nodal says he will return to Los Angeles one week a month to continue his other job as chief planner of the MacArthur Park Public Art Program, a revitalization project sponsored in part by Otis/Parsons.

Ayres, 50, said she will assume her new post in mid-May. She has held her present position since 1986, during which time she organized the Newport Beach museum’s New California Artists Series and curated its second biennial. Prior to that, she was a part-time instructor at USC where she received her doctorate in art history.

“Anne is probably one of the most respected curators in Southern California,” said Otis/Parsons dean Roger Workman by telephone Wednesday. “The artists on the selection committee all waxed poetic about her knowledge and nurturing of their work and her other abilities . . . I think she has helped make the Newport Harbor Art Museum one of the most exciting museums in the area.”

Workman declined to name the “four or five” runners-up to Ayres, who was chosen by a nine-person selection committee including Otis/Parsons faculty and local art-community representatives.

Ayres said Wednesday that she accepted the new job, “intrigued by the thought that the gallery would need to reflect the interdisciplinary needs of the (art and design) college as well as the community.”

“I’m hoping to develop an independent vision--something between an alternative space like LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, downtown), and an academic gallery that mounts well-researched exhibitions addressing aspects of 20th-Century art and design,” Ayres said.

Joy Silverman, LACE director and selection committee member, hailed Ayres’ appointment.

“I think it will mean a very different direction for the gallery,” Silverman said, adding that Nodal, her former husband, “was a real visionary and accomplished an incredible amount with very few resources.”

Ayres said that the Otis/Parsons Exhibitions Center, which presents about six exhibits a year on a budget of about $200,000, needs more money. Workman said that he and Ayres have “agreed in principle to begin increasing the budget over the next few years.”

Nodal, who began as director of the Exhibitions Center in 1983--the same year he helped launch the MacArthur Park revitalization program--said he left the gallery because, “I felt that I had done as much as I could at Otis, and I wanted to go beyond that.” He added that he has begun work at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans on projects similar to those at MacArthur Park.