Community Colleges Add Life to Picture : Art: Academic galleries lend vitality and variety to San Diego’s art scene as they assume a broader role in staging dynamic exhibitions.

The boom and bust of downtown’s gallery scene a few years back spread many a grimace across the faces of those San Diegans who crave a regular visual fix.

Just a few galleries still survive downtown, and a few others persist admirably in other parts of the city, but not enough to merit calling San Diego a viable locale for the sale of art. San Diego may not be a buying audience, but it has proven to be an attentive one, eager to feast on the available array of art offerings.

Museums, university galleries, a few alternative spaces and that handful of tenacious commercial galleries have all provided a steady diet for the visual glutton in town. And another source has emerged in force in recent years: the community college gallery.

Nestled in complexes of classrooms, community college galleries have traditionally been low-key complements to schools’ art departments, featuring faculty and student shows as well as other local or regional artists. Perhaps in response to San Diego’s dearth of adventurous, contemporary art galleries, many of the community colleges here have assumed a more dynamic role, programming shows of current Soviet art, African-American art and politically charged installations. All this in addition to their obligatory fare.

Ambitions are running even higher these days, as three community colleges plan new facilities that explicitly aim to serve the community at large, not just their student populations.

At Cuyamaca College in El Cajon, for example, funds are being sought to develop the new Heritage of the Americas Museum. Based on collections donated by local retired businessman Bernard Lueck, the museum will strive to take its viewers on a “journey through time.” A tour through its four wings will lead from Paleozoic fossils, Peruvian burial markers, Iroquois combs, Hopi Kachinas and Sioux baby carriers to Western-style painting and sculpture.

Lueck and his wife, Bernadette, Santee residents who have collected art and artifacts for more than 50 years, envision a museum for visitors of all ages and are hoping to establish ties with the city school system, according to Cuyamaca College President Sam Ciccati.

“This will be the first museum of its kind in East County,” Ciccati said. “For us, the benefits are that it ties into our own educational programs in anthropology, art and archeology. All of those departments can use the materials in the museum as part of their curriculum. Also, it’s a wonderful way to get members of the community to come to the campus.”

Construction for the 10,000-square-foot structure is scheduled to start this fall, and the museum will open in the fall of 1991. The Luecks donated $400,000 toward the museum’s construction budget of $900,000, and the college has raised an additional $200,000 from corporate and private donors. An endowment will have to be raised to support the museum’s operations, Ciccati said, although the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District has agreed to help with the building’s maintenance. The Heritage of the Americas Museum will be the first exhibition space for the 12-year-old college.

To the northwest, MiraCosta College in Oceanside trades in its 400-square-foot gallery for a new, 1,000-square-foot facility next month, when the college’s new student center opens Sept. 9. The gallery, on the ground floor of the $3-million student center, will be named the Kruglak Gallery, for the late Amy Kruglak. In 1985, she made a gift of about $50,000 toward the gallery in honor of her late husband.

The new gallery will be better located on campus than the former gallery, which was set among the art classrooms. It will therefore be more accessible to the community, according to college President H. Deon Holt.

“We’re hoping to attract more important traveling exhibitions with the new, larger space,” Holt said, adding that the college board wants the gallery to become more of a community resource.

The Kruglak Gallery will open with a MiraCosta faculty show, followed by a show of work by Albert Chong, a UC San Diego graduate student who will be a visiting scholar at the college for the 1990-91 academic year. Michael Portera, a member of MiraCosta’s art faculty, will retain the position of gallery director at least through December.

Finally, Mesa College in San Diego continues to search for a major donor for its proposed 3,300-square-foot gallery, designed by acclaimed local architect Rob Wellington Quigley. Gallery director Kathleen Stoughton will make proposals to several potential donors over the next few weeks, in hope of securing a gift of $1 million or more to launch the fund-raising campaign. Stoughton estimates a budget for the gallery of $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

“The biggest problem is that we can’t get state funding because of Proposition 13,” she said. “It says that state funds may not be used for the construction of art galleries. They’re considered frivolous, unless classrooms are included, but that poses additional security problems for us.”

The proposed gallery features a sculpture concourse, offices and a sunken amphitheater. A 1985 gift of 70 works of African art by the family of local collector Charles Robertson acted as a catalyst for the planning of the gallery. When built, it is expected to provide the only permanent display of African art in the city.

Mesa art history professor Barbara Blackmun, a specialist in the area of African art, recently attracted another sizable donation to the college, a collection of 29 Vigango carved wood commemorative sculptures from Kenya. The gift, made by Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Gross of Culver City, has been appraised in excess of $95,000.

Southwestern College in Chula Vista is also in transition. Larry Urrutia, who has held many art-related positions in San Diego, including that of gallery director at San Diego State University, becomes the new gallery director at Southwestern.

Palomar College in San Marcos and Grossmont College in El Cajon plan no major changes in the coming year, but both have active galleries that, like the others, are continually trying to live up to their names by adding vitality and variety to San Diego’s the art community.