Laguna’s Art History Is One of Transition Since 1981

When Charles Desmarais assumes directorship of the Laguna Art Museum in October, the museum will have been leaderless for nearly a year.

The former director, William Otton, left in November to become president of the Art Institute of Southern California, also in Laguna Beach. Previously an associate professor of art and director of the Weil Gallery at Corpus Christi State University in Texas, Otton had come to the Laguna Art Museum in January, 1981.

He guided its transition from an easygoing local landmark making do on $140,000 a year to an institution with a $1.1-million budget. The museum is being accredited by the American Assn. of Museums.

Otton’s major achievement was the $1.5-million reconstruction and expansion of the museum’s ocean-bluff structure, completed in 1986. The additional 9,500 square feet virtually doubled the size of the building.

In 1984, faced with having to close the museum during the renovation, Otton accepted C.J. Segerstrom & Sons’ donation of a 3,000-square-foot rent-free space in South Coast Plaza. The museum maintains exhibition space, a newly expanded shop and office space in this Costa Mesa “satellite” gallery.

Otton’s tenure was also marked by unusually hectic staff turnover.

Robert McDonald, now director of the de Saisset Museum at the University of Santa Clara, was hired as the museum’s first curator in 1984. His position was suddenly eliminated less than a year later, when Otton called the appointment “premature” in view of the museum’s budget and programming.

Curator duties were assumed by Mike McGee when he was hired in 1986 as the “programs coordinator.” McGee left Laguna last fall to become curator of the Modern Museum of Art in Santa Ana, a position he has since resigned. Michael McManus was subsequently appointed to replace McGee in Laguna, with the restored title of chief curator.

Other departments at the museum also had personnel problems. The last development director, Tara Madden, came and went in the course of a single year, 1987.

Otton himself considered leaving in the summer of 1985 to accept the director’s position at the Rockford Art Museum near Chicago. But he decided to remain at the Laguna museum when the board agreed to employ him on a contract basis, renewable annually.

The museum traces its origins to the Laguna Beach Art Assn., founded in 1918, whose members included painters Edgar A. Payne, Frank W. Cuprien and Anna A. Hills. In 1929 the association settled in a new building on Cliff Drive, designed by Myron Hunt.

The building was enlarged in 1951; in 1972 it became the Laguna Beach Museum of Art. In 1986, under Otton’s directorship, the institution changed its name once again, to the Laguna Art Museum.