Who Owns the Bowers Museum?

The city of Santa Ana ran the Bowers Museum for 51 years until 1987, when it appointed the nonprofit Charles W. Bowers Museum Corp. to manage the institution’s day-to-day affairs. The city still owns the museum and gives it an annual $1-million stipend, but the eventual goal is to make the corporation support itself.

Meanwhile--”inadvertently,” according to Bowers board President Arthur V. Strock--”there were some clauses in the agreement between the board and the city that puts long-term grants at peril. (In 2008), all the assets of the museum, present and future, revert to city ownership. . . .

“It’s hard to go to an individual or institution and say, ‘Gee, we’d like you to give us $1 million to build a gallery or to buy a painting, with the knowledge that we can’t assure control of it for the indefinite future. It was a mistake on everybody’s part.”

City Atty. Edward J. Cooper, however, said the agreement between the city and the Bowers Corp. “protects the continuing operation of the museum” by providing “an incentive for the corporation to prove itself.”

The 20-year agreement works like this, Cooper said:

For the first 10 years, the Bowers receives the same operating budget from the city (basically, the amount it received in 1987, plus a cost-of-living adjustment). For the succeeding 10 years, the city handout will be reduced by 10% yearly, until the museum is running completely on money from other sources.

If the corporation is unable to run the museum, control will revert to the city.

Cooper said the city “would probably know by the 15th year whether or not the Bowers was able to stand on its own two feet. I think it’s reasonable to say that the Bowers Corp. would then receive a very long-term lease” from the city.

But in the meantime, Cooper added, donors should have no qualms about the long-term future of their gifts. A donor may specify that any gift be used only by the Bowers Corp. and that it be returned if the museum reverts to city control.

“We would encourage donors to become actively involved,” he said, “and simply make that a term or condition of the donation.”