Schimmel Leaving as Newport Curator for Post at MOCA : Museum: His resignation at Newport Harbor follows that of its director and comes in the early stages of a major fund drive.

Paul Schimmel has resigned as chief curator of the Newport Harbor Art Museum to become chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

It is the second resignation of a major Newport Harbor Art Museum official--director Kevin Consey left in October to become director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art--at a time when the museum is in the early stages of a $50-million building and endowment campaign.

But museum trustee Harry Bubb on Wednesday downplayed the effect of the resignations on fund-raising efforts. Individuals and corporations already solicited “know (the museum’s) history, background and level of (community) support,” Bubb said.

He added, however, that the museum will refrain from approaching foundations and other funding sources unfamiliar with the museum until a new director is in place. The museum hopes to hire a director “by the end of the first quarter of the (new) year,” he said. Ground breaking for the new building, designed by Renzo Piano, has been scheduled for late 1990 with the opening slated for 1992.

“The most important thing is that Paul Schimmel certainly did an outstanding job for the museum,” Bubb said. “He is very highly regarded nationally. . . . It is a loss one would have preferred not to have occurred, but it does enable us to say to (the) new director, ‘You will have a substantial say in the hiring of a new curator.’ ”

Although Schimmel won’t assume his new position until April 16, he will begin the transition later this month by working at MOCA one day a week. He is succeeding Mary Jane Jacob, who left MOCA in October to pursue independent curatorial projects.

Exhibits at Newport Harbor are scheduled through December, 1990.

During his eight-year tenure at Newport Harbor, Schimmel, 35, organized a retrospective of Chris Burden’s work and several exhibitions of post-war American art. He also initiated the “Newport Biennial” and an ongoing exhibition series, “New California Artists.”

Schimmel called his appointment “a great honor. . . . MOCA is an institution which in less than 10 years has become recognized as one of the top museums internationally.”

He said Newport Harbor has been “a richly rewardly experience” and noted that while he was there the museum “was transformed from a regionally known institution to an internationally recognized contemporary art museum.

“Newport Harbor has provided the most significant opportunity a curator can have: the freedom and support to create programs and build a collection in an original manner,” Schimmel said.

He singled out the 1988 Burden exhibition and a 1986 show, “The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism Into Abstract Expressionism--Works on Paper 1938-1948,” as “the most significant” exhibits he curated at Newport Harbor.

Acquisitions of California postwar art increased 300% during his tenure, including works by James Turrell, Bill Viola, Ed Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston, Tom Marioni and John Baldessari.

Richard Koshalek, director of MOCA, said Schimmel was hired after an “international search” for “an individual who had the energy, creativity and experience in dealing with contemporary art that would continue MOCA’s program into the second decade of its history.

“The founding of MOCA had to to with the ‘80s; now we’re moving into the ‘90s. The buildings are built, the core (works) for the collection are now in place. . . . As we move into a new decade we were looking for the appropriate person to lead the curatorial staff. We feel Paul is the right person.”

Schimmel holds a BA in museum studies from Syracuse University and did graduate work in modern art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He was an intern at the Whitney Museum of American Art and a curator at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston from 1975 to 1978.