The Van Camp Foundation of Long Beach...

The Van Camp Foundation of Long Beach has pledged $450,000 to the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach for operating expenses and to endow the Alice and Gilbert Van Camp Scholarship Fund. The gift will be distributed in equal allotments over the next 3 years, and the first scholarship recipients will be members of the incoming class in fall 1989.

The late Gilbert Van Camp and his wife Alice, former residents of Laguna Beach, were major benefactors to the Art Institute. With this contribution, their foundation’s support of programs at the college totals $833,195.

Photographer Susan Rankaitis of Inglewood, chairwoman of the art department at Chapman College in Orange has received a $15,000 Visual Artists Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

No Orange County residents were among the 252 artists nationwide who received $2.2 million in grants for work in photography, sculpture or crafts, although one other artist with Orange County ties--Mark Lere, sculptor of Irvine’s first piece of public art--also received a $15,000 grant.

Rankaitis said she plans to take a year off from teaching and “do nothing but eat, breathe and sleep art.” She is also one of eight artists recommended for a U.S.-France Exchange Fellowship administered by the NEA that will allow her to occupy living quarters and studio space in a chateau in Southern France for several months.