California Collection: Place of Its Own : Artwork: Frederick Weisman says 33 pieces from his collection are destined for the San Diego Museum of Art because of its willingness to accommodate his vision.

Here to personally announce his $1.5-million gift of 33 contemporary California artworks to the San Diego Museum of Art, Los Angeles art collector Frederick R. Weisman appeared reassured that his collection will have a proper home when it arrives here in March.

“This wonderful museum is going to be the museum in the state of California where a spectator can come in and see California art in one place, one location,” Weisman said. “Not a couple in this room and a couple on another floor.”

San Diego was not the obvious home for even this small portion of the 78-year-old Weisman’s art holdings, which number 2,000. Yet this is the collector’s largest gift of artworks to date.

“San Diego didn’t have a lot of California art due to conservatism and because the museum never had a lot of money,” explained Weisman Art Foundation Director Henry Hopkins.

“We said: ‘What better place?’ ”

Weisman’s strong ties to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he is on the board of trustees, made some question his gift to a museum 120 miles away. Weisman said he considered donating the works to LACMA as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, the Newport Harbor Art Museum and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art.

What the San Diego Museum of Art offered Weisman was the willingness to accommodate his vision for a gallery devoted to California works. The museum will exhibit the 33 works in the Frederick R. Weisman Gallery for California Art, as well as other purchases and donations in keeping with the spirit of the collection.

Other museums had not agreed to that condition for the gift, Weisman said. Earl A. (Rusty) Powell, director of the L.A. County Museum of Art, proposed integrating Weisman’s gift into the rest of the museum’s contemporary holdings.

“They’ve got California art, but it’s on different floors and in different rooms. We wanted it together,” Weisman said.

Other museums, such as the Newport and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla, exhibit their contemporary California art in conjunction with international artworks.

It was the concentration of a California collection--with such artists as John Baldessari, Bruce Connor, Sam Francis, David Hockney, Lita Albuquerque and Alexis Smith--that was most important to Weisman, not an obligation for the museum to retain the works.

“If the directors feel there’s California art that should be in the collection and they have works they want to sell, they can do so. What’s important is you’ll walk in there and see California art,” Weisman said.

“We want this to be a vital collection, and up-to-date collection for the next 50 years and so on,” Weisman said.

A condition of the San Diego gift is that a major portion of the collection remain on view.

“I hate to see things in storage. I like to see things, I like to share things. And if I can’t see them, I want other people to be able to see them.”