Director Rejects Museum Offer

James Demetrion, director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Washington, D.C., has turned down an offer to serve as director of Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach.

“A number of reasons” keep him at the Hirshhorn, Demetrion said Monday. “The main reason is that I’m very reluctant to get into a big building program--my least favorite thing.”

Newport Harbor is in the middle of a $50-million drive to endow and finance construction of a museum at East Coast Highway and MacArthur Boulevard. Opening of the building is planned for early 1993.

Museum officials did not disclose the terms of their offer to Demetrion, 59, who has been director of the Hirshhorn since 1984. He was director for 15 years of the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. In the ‘60s, he was curator and then director of the Pasadena Art Museum before Norton Simon acquired it.

Former Newport Harbor director Kevin Consey left in November to become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.