Museum Merger Considered : County government: A plan under consideration would ease the financial woes of the Museum of Natural History and the system of botanic gardens.

County officials are considering a merger of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and the county Arboreta and Botanic Gardens in a plan that would be a major restructuring of natural science facilities in Southern California, The Times has learned.

The merger plan was described Friday by Craig Black, director of the natural history museum, and a spokeswoman for county Chief Administrative Officer Richard Dixon as preliminary and tentative.

But if it is put into effect--perhaps as early as the coming fiscal year that starts this summer--the merger could ease the plight of two county organizations that have suffered from chronic financial difficulties in recent years.

The merged organization would create a complex of six museum and public garden facilities with a combined current budget of almost $20 million a year, nearly 400 employees and hosting nearly 2 million visitors annually. The natural history museum has triple or quadruple the budget and numbers of employees and visitors as the arboreta.

The merger would join into one organization the natural history museum in Exposition Park and its satellite George C. Page Museum at the LaBrea Tar Pits with the main county arboretum in Arcadia, Descanso Gardens in La Canada-Flintridge, the South Coast Botanic Gardens in Palos Verdes and the Virginia Robinson Estate in Beverly Hills.

The merged enterprise--the name of which has not yet been decided on--would also incorporate an internationally known collection of bird science materials held by the privately incorporated Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. Earlier this year, officials of the foundation visited Descanso Gardens to review several specific potential construction sites for a new facility of between 20,000 and 40,000 square feet.

The foundation was established by Ed N. Harrison, president of the natural history museum’s county-appointed board of governors. The foundation collection, which is currently crowded into a small structure behind Harrison’s Westside residence, has been searching for larger, permanent quarters for several years.

Another collection of ornithological research materials currently housed at UCLA might also be included in the merged entity, according to Lloyd Kiff, the foundation’s curator.

A spokesman for Supervisor Mike Antonovich--who represents the district in which the arboretum is headquartered--said Antonovich “is aware of the conversations.” The spokesman characterized the possible merger as one of several possibilities for linking the Arboreta and Botanic Gardens with another county agency. The spokesman and museum sources said the county Department of Parks and Recreation was another possible merger partner for the arboretum complex.

Any merger would have to be approved by the full five-member Board of Supervisors.

Black said he had been told by Dixon that the Board of Supervisors had discussed the proposal in general and asked for staff analysis. Both Black and John Campbell, a consultant to the county-run Citizens Economy and Efficiency Commission, which reviews consolidations and reforms of the county bureaucracy, characterized the joining of the museum complex and arboretum operation as a natural match with significant potential scientific, public and financial benefits.

Dixon was said to be out of town and not available for comment. Mary Jung, Dixon’s assistant, confirmed that the topic had been discussed in the context of an informal proposal. Black said the plan had been discussed again last week in Dixon’s office at a meeting of county department heads.

But, Jung cautioned, the merger “is not a fait accompli. There is no staff work going on yet. There have been suggestions regarding consolidations, but there has not been active discussion about implementation plans.”

Black and other sources noted that merging the natural history museum and the arboretum complex had been discussed sporadically since the citizens economy commission issued its final report in 1983. The proposal resurfaced about three years ago, Black and other sources said, but was not pursued in deference to the arboretum’s longtime director, Francis Ching. Ching retired April 1, however, and Black and sources familiar with the situation said his departure removed the last obstacle to putting the plan into effect.

Black said the natural history museum’s executive committee and full board had already held preliminary discussions of the merger. A discussion also is included in minutes of a Monday meeting of the museum’s curators widely circulated within the museum and obtained by The Times.

“I think we bring to this process a long experience in dealing with the school systems, environmental education and education programming,” Black said. “We have a staff in botany and an education division that would bring a lot of strength. We also have a history and knowledge of dealing with collections and an ability to generate proposals and funding at the federal level to support them.”

“It (a merger) certainly sounds right to me,” said Campbell, who emphasized he was speaking for himself as a consultant and not for the citizens’ commission. “The arboretum has always considered itself to be more museum-like than park-like. It has research functions and strength in botanical research.

“It seems an incredibly sensible idea that ought to be put into effect.”

The curators’ meeting minutes also indicate the museum has already held preliminary discussions about relocating its botany department to the arboretum--a step in resolving what has become a crucial overcrowding problem at the museum’s Exposition Park headquarters. The museum has added leased space in two nearby warehouses in the last two months to try to accommodate its burgeoning collections. A plan to build a satellite facility in the Sepulveda Basin area of the San Fernando Valley a couple of years ago led nowhere.

The museum has also experienced recent asbestos-abatement problems that have apparently focused new concern among museum employees on the adequacy of the Exposition Park facilities. An accidental release of asbestos fibers during removal by workers in the museum’s basement a month ago resulted in a large area of the basement being roped off. Friday, warning signs were reportedly posted after a visit to the site by federal inspectors.

The asbestos removal problem was seen by museum insiders as symptomatic of a variety of problems--but chiefly as a manifestation of an ongoing financial squeeze that has gripped virtually every county-owned cultural institution. The merger plan was widely viewed as primarily an attempt to address issues of cost-control and to ease financial strain on both the museum and arboretum.

Campbell said the arboretum had been particularly hard hit by money reductions since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. He said staffing levels in the complex had been reduced by as much as 80%. “To coalesce and consolidate all of the effort would improve the picture a lot,” he said.

Leon Arnold, acting director of the arboretum, maintained he had not been officially told of the merger plan. But he said rumors of the possible joining of facilities--which would be the largest and most significant merger of county museums ever affected--had become so widespread this week that four of the 15 members of the arboretum’s board of directors had called him to inquire if the reports were accurate.

Arnold voiced fears, however, that a merger would impair the arboretum’s ability to raise private sector funds. He said the complex currently has five separate private support organizations that raise a combined total of about $900,000 a year for the arboretum. But they are dwarfed by the much larger Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Foundation, which accounts for between a third and a half of the museum’s total budget of $16 million a year.

“I question whether, under some kind of merger with whoever it might be, that the enthusiasm (of the five support groups) might dry up and go away,” Arnold said. “I personally think this could be detrimental to the arboretum.”

The merger plan surfaces nearly three years after an earlier attempt by the natural history museum to take over the private Southwest Museum in Mount Washington fell apart after details of secret negotiations were reported in news media. The disclosures prompted an intense political controversy in which City Councilman Richard Alatorre vehemently opposed any loss of autonomy for the Southwest Museum, which houses one of the most significant collections of Native American art and artifacts in North America.

The proposal also comes as the natural history museum is struggling to resolve a conflict with the National Science Foundation over allegedly inadequate and improper accounting practices that led the federal science agency to declare the museum ineligible for new federal grants late last year.

The ineligibility still has not been lifted, but Black said a federal audit team is due to return to the museum for a three-day visit at the end of this month. The science foundation has set a May 15 deadline for the museum to institute acceptable changes in its accounting system. The foundation has demanded return of more than $250,000 in federal grant money it says may have been improperly spent.