Gala Opens Annenberg Exhibit

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art pulled out all the stops Wednesday night at a black-tie gala saluting the opening of “Masters of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.”

Known in art circles (and on museum banners) simply as the Annenberg Collection, the 54 paintings, watercolors and drawings are critically acknowledged as one of the finest privately owned collections of its kind. The works normally hang in the Palm Springs home of former ambassador to Britain Walter Annenberg and his wife, Leonore.

The Annenberg Collection is on tour, having already appeared at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Washington’s National Gallery. After Los Angeles, the collection will spend next summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The tour might be an audition of the museums. Annenberg twice refused to sell the collection as a whole, and has made clear his disdain for splitting it up or creating an eponymous “boutique” museum.

The question has been raised in art circles: Which museum will get the Annenberg Collection when he decides to bestow it? It was a hot topic of conversation among the guests, but museum officials and trustees were as diplomatic about the question as Annenberg himself.

“Well, clearly it would be a collection that would have a phenomenal impact on any museum,” LACMA Director Earl A. Powell said. “But Mr. Annenberg will make his own mind up about the dispensation of the collection.”

Robert F. Maguire, new president of the museum’s board of trustees, was even more tight-lipped. “I think that will be a very private decision on the Annenbergs’ part. It’s not even appropriate to speculate.”

But, of course, everyone did.

The guest list included museum stalwarts, Hollywood art mavens and Annenberg’s compatriots in Ronald Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet. (The Reagans were in Europe.)

Guests oohed and aahed at the Cezannes, Van Goghs, Picassos and others before sitting down to rack of lamb and spinach souffle, catered by Somerset. Among the many on hand were Caroline Ahmanson with Grant Horne, Wallis Annenberg with Arnold Klein, Daisy and Dan Belin, Betsy Bloomingdale, Dorothy and Bill Davila, Barbara Davis, Harriet and Armand Deutsch, Ann and Kirk Douglas, Times Mirror Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Erburu with wife Lois, Wendy and Leonard Goldberg, Elaine and Bram Goldsmith, Marion and Earle Jorgenson, Lee Minnelli, former Times Mirror Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Dr. Franklin D. Murphy with wife Judy, Erlene and Norman Sprague, and Lillian Apodaca Weiner.

GTE has underwritten the Los Angeles exhibition with a $200,000 grant, including an educational outreach program. GTE President Chuck Lee spoke over dessert before turning the podium over to Annenberg, who made a few brief remarks before concluding, “I’m not going to hold you here any longer. Get out of here.”

And everybody did.