ART : Bowers Hopes to Rewrite Fine Print to Assure Museum’s Autonomy

Undiscussed amid the recent talk about the Bowers Museum as a private institution whose expansion will be built into a private office structure by a private developer is this potential problem: In 2008, control of the museum and all it holds will revert to a public entity, Santa Ana.

So says the fine print in a 1986 agreement between the Bowers and the city that established the terms of the museum’s current status as private, nonprofit corporation after 50 years of city management.

The problem is that many conservative cultural philanthropists here in the heart of Reagan Country scorn giving money to arts groups that accept public money and would balk at donating to a museum that will eventually rejoin a municipality.

The agreement states that the city would use donations and loans it inherited “solely for the purpose for which the donation or loan was made.” But the document is clear: The private corporation “shall vacate the premises and deliver possession thereof to the city.”

At the same time the city would reassume control, the agreement says, its obligation to help pay the museum corporation’s operating costs will run out. In other words, the agreement says the city would run the place but depend on the private sector to pay the bills. The agreement, on file at City Hall, covers 20 years, starting with the 1987-88 fiscal cycle.

The Bowers, which focuses on the arts of the Americas, is planning unprecedentedly aggressive fund-raising drives to help renovate, expand and endow the museum.

How would potential donors respond to the arrangement, which has never been publicly reported?

In the words of one county arts benefactor, who asked not to be named:

“A lot of people who might give are smart enough to go down to City Hall and examine documents relating to the museum. And I know that there are a lot of people who, when they find out what the terms really are, will shy away. Who wants to donate to the city of Santa Ana? It can raise its own money through taxes.”

The clause, a vestige of the long debate about the museum’s relationship to the city, represents a distinct disadvantage for the Bowers at a time when the local battle for the arts dollar is fierce.

When donating to the Newport Harbor Art Museum or the Laguna Art Museum, wealthy donors can at least imagine that their gifts will buy a measure of influence unfettered by government for the foreseeable future.

Asked about the clause, members of the Bowers Board of Governors who have joined the museum since the 1986 agreement said they would like to recast it to more conclusively assert the museum’s autonomy. And Mayor Dan Young and other city officials said they won’t rule out that idea.

“I would think that it should be changed,” said Harriet Harris, president of the Bowers board.

Without setting a timetable for renegotiating the clause with the city, she added: “I think that it is a matter of properly agreeing to language that would work. They (city officials) have a concern that the museum would remain open in perpetuity. There has to be a provision that they can come back in if there is any question that we (the nonprofit corporation) are not being successful. But we will be successful. I do not believe that the city wants the museum back.”

Young, who is up for reelection, said: “I can’t speak for the entire City Council on it, but I don’t have any problem doing whatever it takes to create a level of comfort it takes for someone to donate to what is an essentially private entity.”

John Acosta, Young’s opponent in the mayoral race, said he would like to look closer at the museum’s long-range financial prospects before taking a position on its contract with the city.

City Manager David N. Ream said the museum board “can make a proposal” to change the museum’s long-term status “and we’ll review it.”

Both Young and Ream have greeted positively the Bowers governors’ March 15 decision to set aside much of a completed design for a $9.2-million, free-standing expansion of the Bowers.

A new proposal calls for a museum annex in an office tower to be built jointly with a private developer. The museum would take a share of the rental income earned from the commercial space, providing a steady source of income.

The project, which would triple the museum’s size, is still in the talking stage. Bowers officials have said expansion work, originally scheduled to start this summer, could be delayed six months or more.

Another part of the project--renovation of the current space of 23,000 square feet--is expected to begin in January. The whole renovation/expansion is not expected to be completed until well into 1990.

Raising money for a museum whose public profile will inevitably wane while it undergoes a major reconstruction is going to be “a significant challenge,” said David G. Tucker, who just joined the Bowers as its director of development.

But Tucker is optimistic: “We can try to educate our constituency as thoroughly as we can about the new Bowers, and we can try to do that immediately.”

The museum, he added, will maintain its link with the public through various educational programs and exhibitions in alternative locations. Another part of the upcoming transition phase will be an effort to recast the museum’s contractual relationship with the city in favor of joining lasting managerial independence with financial self-sufficiency.

“I think that to any intelligent, fairly substantial contributor, it might make a difference,” he said. “I think that big donors want to view any philanthropic situation as a business situation as well. They are giving to a nonprofit institution, but they want to do it with business safeguards. They want to make sure that their money is well utilized, not just in the near term, but in the future.”