LOCAL : Newport Harbor Art Museum Plans to Build $50-Million Showcase

Newport Harbor Art Museum officials unveiled plans today for a dramatic $50-million museum that will be one of the most expensive in California.

The 87,000-square-foot “flying carpet” museum, to be built on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, will be a low-slung, massive structure with an undulating roof.

Designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, best known for his multicolored, spaceship-like Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum is scheduled for completion in late 1992.

The museum, founded in 1962, has grown in popularity and has hosted several traveling exhibitions that received national acclaim but has outgrown its original facility about two miles away.

The $50-million projected cost for the building compares with the 2-year-old Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which cost $23 million, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s new Anderson Building for contemporary art, which cost $35.5 million.