Panel Named to Create New Orange County Arts Council

Ongoing efforts to form a countywide arts service organization took a step forward Monday with the creation of a temporary committee charged with setting up a new Orange County Arts Council.

Charles Desmarais, director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, was named chairman of the Committee to Establish the Orange County Arts Council.

Bonnie Brittain Hall, director of development for South Coast Repertory, and Joan Evans, recreation supervisor for the city of Buena Park, were named as vice chairwomen.

Kathleen Costello, associate director of development for the Newport Harbor Art Museum, and Amy S. Aspell, director of the Irvine Fine Arts Center, were appointed secretary and treasurer, respectively.

Martin Weil, former managing director of Opera Pacific, was elected director and will be the committee’s only paid member “subject to the availability of funds” to pay him, Weil said, adding that other paid consultants may be hired.

He and the other new committee members are among a group of about 20 local arts community members who have been working since last winter to establish an organization to replace the defunct Orange County Arts Alliance.

“We are not seeking to become the new agency . . . , we are just seeking to provide ourselves with a structure to move forward, to raise a little operating money, and to spend it to establish such an agency,” Weil said.

“It is most likely that the people eventually selected to run the agency will be other than ourselves.”

The new committee, which is to be dissolved on Dec. 31, has no funds at present, but it adopted a budget of $8,500 for the next four months, said Weil, who would not say how the money would be raised.

Public meetings are to be held between now and the end of the year throughout the county to solicit interest and gather input on how the new council should be funded and what its goals should be, he said.

A subcommittee to elect other members to the committee to establish the council was also named Monday, Weil said.