Art Contest to Publicize ‘Free Tuesdays’

‘Free Tuesday” at the Newport Harbor Art Museum means exactly that: no admission charges every Tuesday throughout 1989.

Underwritten by a $50,000 grant by Jack Shea, a museum trustee and president of Beacon Bay Enterprises Inc. in Newport Beach, the program is intended to introduce more people to the museum.

To inaugurate “Free Tuesday,” the museum is sponsoring an art contest for 75 second-graders at Bonita Canyon Elementary School in Irvine. On Feb. 21, the students will be bused to the museum for a talk by Shea, and they will be asked to draw poster-size pastels on paper.

The drawings will be judged by a seven-member panel drawn mainly from the Orange County media, including Narda Zacchino, deputy managing editor of the Los Angeles Times and editor of The Times Orange County Edition; Tim Kelly, managing editor of the Orange County Register, and Janet Eastman, editor of Orange Coast magazine.

The winning child will receive a free family pass to Disneyland, and his or her art will be reproduced on a poster advertising the free Tuesdays at the museum. The poster will read “Today’s Artist,” with a reproduction of Ron Davis’ painting “No. 573--Vent Duo and Invert,” donated by Shea to the museum, and “Tomorrow’s Artist,” with a reproduction of the winning child’s work.

Several corporations (or their foundations) finance free or reduced-admission days or evenings at major United States museums. Among them are Pacific Telesis Foundation and The Gap Inc. at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Shell Oil Co. Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and Mobil Oil Corp. at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York.

This is the only such program in Orange County.