Two Leading O.C. Museums Study Merger

The Laguna Art Museum--at 71, Orange County’s oldest museum--has asked the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the county’s most prestigious, to discuss the possibilities of a merger.

Trustees of the Newport Harbor museum have agreed to discuss the issue “as a matter of courtesy” and voted Thursday to name a committee of their own to meet with the three-member Laguna committee, a Newport museum spokeswoman said.

Claudette Shaw, president of the Laguna museum’s board of trustees, said any merger most likely would combine administrative services and fund-raising efforts, rather than mix the museums’ collections and operations in a single facility.

Though many of the proposed changes would therefore be behind the scenes, she said, consolidation could result in jointly organized, bigger or more comprehensive exhibits.

In any case, Shaw said, “there is no concrete talk of the merger yet,” and discussions would strictly be exploratory. Any discussion “will be about whether there are advantages or disadvantages” to any kind of merger, said Charles Desmarais, the Laguna museum’s director.

Newport museum spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber stressed that agreement to talk with Laguna is “not at all indicative of any feelings we have pro or con. . . . It’s not an endorsement” of a merger.

Still, “it does seem that some sort of alliance would serve us both well,” Shaw said, stressing again that the merger would occur “way down the road, if it could even be accomplished.”

The Laguna museum, which has an annual operating budget of $1.2 million, has been plagued by a persistent deficit that totaled $72,000 during the fiscal year ended Aug. 31. Shaw said, and at least one arts funding expert has agreed, that the museum is not facing a financial crisis. But, Shaw added, this nagging deficit has caused museum officials to examine ways of addressing the problem.

A merger is one of these possibilities.

The 27-year-old Newport Harbor museum is in the midst of a $50-million drive to build a new facility in Newport Beach. Though it is believed that the campaign is past the halfway mark, the amount raised so far has not been made public.

Desmarais said the sort of merger to be discussed has not been specified. But Shaw said the merger, as informally discussed among museum trustees and community members, would be an administrative rather than physical one.

“The proponents of the (merger) see some way of combining our administrations,” Shaw said. “That way, both of us could keep our expenses to a minimum and keep (fund-raising efforts) under one administration so that we would not compete with each other.

“No one I know of, even those strongly in favor of a merger, wants us to close up shop in Laguna and dissolve into Newport Harbor Art Museum,” she said.

However, at least one Laguna Art Museum member--Thomas T. Tierney, who resigned as a museum trustee on Tuesday after serving six years and who is a member of the Newport Harbor Art Museum--strongly endorsed a merger that would be both administrative and physical.

Asserting that such a move would be “heroic” and “smart business,” Tierney, president of the Tustin-based Vita Tech International vitamin firm, said it would create a “truly regional museum with a major collection of art of California.

“It appears to be a custom fit because the two museums have dissimilar but mutually supportive collecting and exhibiting policies. There is very little overlap,” Tierney said.

The Laguna museum, with 20,000 square feet of gallery space, has a 3,000-piece collection and focuses on the history of California art from the late 19th Century to the present. The Newport museum’s 1,800-piece collection is primarily composed of post-World War II California art. Currently, the Newport museum has 11,000 square feet of gallery space.

Tierney further noted that a physical merger could mean more gallery space for the Laguna and unification of both museums’ memberships, which could aid the Newport museum’s building campaign. Laguna has 3,100 members and Newport has 5,000.

Tierney went so far as to suggest the “sale of the present Laguna Art Museum” ocean-bluff property that he said is worth well more than $1 million, money the “succeeding entity” certainly could use.

“There are people (who) would want to maintain a satellite presence in Laguna,” Tierney said, “but it must be remembered that Laguna Art Museum is a private museum, not a part of the city or integrated into city funding. It is independent and could exist anywhere it wants to.”

Tierney said that five years ago, the Newport museum approached the Laguna museum for exploratory merger discussions. Nothing materialized, he said, because Laguna museum officials wanted to expand their site--which they did in 1986.

But one of the problems with the museum’s fiscal strength has been the increased costs of running its expanded, renovated building, Shaw said.

Still, she feels that “it’s important to the city of Laguna and our supporters that we keep a presence there.” Another option being considered, she said, is relocation within Laguna Beach to a site with more convenient parking. The museum has only on-street metered parking. “People say ‘I’d get down there more often, but parking and traffic is a terrible problem,’ ” Shaw reported.

Shaw said the museum’s trustees approved a letter this week to be sent to Laguna Beach Mayor Robert F. Gentry, expressing interest in the Village Entry Project, a planned development near Forest and Broadway in Laguna Beach, near the site of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts.

Times staff writer Cathy Curtis contributed to this story.