ART : Watching LACMA Grow : After overseeing a boom decade, Rusty Powell has a right to smile as the County Museum of Art marks an anniversary

Earl Alexander (Rusty) Powell III is winding up his 10th year as director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At the same time, the museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary as the Taj of the Tar Pits. The official mark of the celebration is an exhibition of about 70 gifts and promised gifts--”As Many Worlds as There Are.” It opens today and runs through Jan. 6.

LACMA has come a long way in the quarter-century since 1965 when it moved out of Exposition Park and what is now the Museum of Natural History. There, aesthetics played second fiddle to dinosaur bones that were, admittedly, often more arresting than the art.

The director who spearheaded the move to the new building was the highly respected Richard F. Brown. He left shortly after the move--and an acrimonious hassle with the board--to direct the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth. He was succeeded by Baroque scholar Kenneth H. Donohue who kept a steady hand on the tiller, slowly building the collection until house attic and cellar were stuffed. It was time to expand.

Under Powell’s stewardship, LACMA has had a remarkable growth spurt that has propelled it into a new status sphere.

First came a $10-million expansion plan. The Ahmanson Building was renovated to lend scope and sense to the permanent collection, then joined to the Hammer special exhibitions wing. No sooner was that accomplished in 1983 than work began on the $35-million Robert O. Anderson Building complex. The longed-for home for modern and contemporary art jelled in 1986. The museum soon began construction of Shin’enkan--the $13-million permanent pavilion for Japanese art housing Joe D. Price’s stunning Edo period collection. That came to fruition in 1988.

The results added up to something of an architectural smorgasbord. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer’s Anderson Building has a Deco-Babylonian air. The Japanese pavilion, designed by Bruce Goff, looks like a samurai fortress trying to become a ‘50s drive-in, while what remains of William Pereira’s $12-million plant still has the prim sterility of mid-’60s minimalism.

At very worst it’s all in the tradition of Los Angeles’ wacky eclectic-exotic architecture. At best, it has settled in nicely as a place where people like to loll at the much-improved cafe and stroll in the shade of the courtyard. Gardens are shaping up. The place feels gracious and welcoming. Museum membership of 86,000 rivals that of New York Metropolitan’s 100,000. Tickets sales for the current showing of the Annenberg collection have reached 200,000. LACMA’s own “The Fauve Landscape” is drawing large crowds.

You’d think that combination of accomplishments and anniversaries would give a fellow pause, if not from exhaustion, then from the need to reflect. Not Rusty Powell.

“I haven’t reflected,” he admits with a slight, characteristic aura of embarrassment that causes him to blush pink under his surfer-blond hair. At 46, he still looks bluff and hearty like the Ivy League prep-school footballer he once was. More dignified, of course. His museum-director’s dark suit has a subtly snappy pinstripe. He has a weakness for Porsches.

“It all seems like a continuum. It’s been continuously interesting and occasionally frustrating. I don’t do much outside directing the museum. Maybe a little tennis occasionally, but this is the kind of job that requires a workaholic.”

Reminded that Harry N. Abrams Inc. recently published his book on American landscape pioneer Thomas Cole, Powell grins and blushes some more. Writing on the founder of the Hudson River School came naturally to Powell, who took his Ph.D. at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, specializing in American and European art of the 19th and 20th centuries. Before taking the LACMA post he was executive curator at the National Gallery.

“I do like to keep my hand in on scholarly and artistic things to remind myself it’s not all building buildings and raising funds. Maybe I’ll reflect when the master plan program is finished in 1995.”

He reaches for a series of floor plans. He’s intensely protective of the museum. Any criticism of it causes him to either wince or wax huffy. When he points out that “re-cladding” the facades of the Pereira buildings is a high priority now, he seems to be responding to criticism of the presently mismatched architecture.

He points out the most visible hoped-for next step is a wing for the decorative arts. It would cantilever from the west facade of the Ahmanson Building out over the staff parking lot. Cautioning it is not a done deal, he nonetheless feels encouraged about his talks with Arthur Gilbert, who is considering backing the building. Gilbert, the noted collector of gold and silver objects, has already donated a substantial part of his holdings to the museum.

“I do feel somewhat reflective about the 25th anniversary because the museum has grown with the city. Los Angeles has become a real place for culture. It’s not an alternative anymore but a very, very serious center with ourselves, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Huntington, Simon and Getty museums. The Getty is unique.

“We need community support and we are getting it. Even in these days when tax laws discourage donations, we have not been as affected as other institutions. Most places have experienced a 50% fall-off in gifts. Our average is off about 25% to 30%. That says a lot for this community.”

Referring to the anniversary show, he says, “Promised gifts are advantageous because if a work is donated after death, the donor’s estate profits as before. It’s an intelligent way to build the permanent collection. If a curator knows he is going to get a work by a certain artist he can concentrate on looking for other things.”

Works in the promised-gift show are “of generally high quality,” he says. Among “the best of the best” he cited Lucille Simon’s Gauguin, “The Swineherd, Brittany”; Edward Carter’s Jacob van Ruisdael, “The Great Oak”; and Jo Ann and Julian Ganz’s Fitz Hugh Lane, “Boston Harbor, Sunset.” He is particularly pleased at the outright gift of Willem de Kooning’s “Montauk Highway,” from the Michael and Dorothy Blankfort collection.

He appears sincerely and relentlessly upbeat, and for good reason. The museum goes from strength to strength. It has organized a string of original exhibitions including “The Avant-Garde in Russia,” “A Day in the Country” and “German Expressionist Sculpture.” Such originality has put the place on the mainstream map. It garners a progressively larger share of important traveling exhibitions such as the Max Beckmann retrospective and the Annenberg collection. It shows no sign of slowing.

Upcoming events include such must-see shows as curator Stephanie Baron’s re-creation of Hitler’s infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibition, and the massive compendium “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries,” now at New York’s Metropolitan. Admirers feel the museum as reached critical mass. Powell says modestly, “We do have a different definition of ‘business as usual’ these days.”

Nonetheless, it seems time to insert a little gloom into the proceedings. A sure way to do that is to remind Powell of the loss of the Armand Hammer collection. In 1988, the colorful collector, oil baron and world-class influence broker pulled his long-promised holdings away from LACMA to establish his own museum, under construction in Westwood.

Powell doesn’t flinch: “That was not a great moment or an avoidable situation. It left holes that will be hard to fill. We’ve done it with the Gauguin, but we have no Van Gogh.” He admits the prospect of getting one appears slim. Works by the tragic Dutchman in private hands are rare, and there is a Midas market for what there is.

“I think that over time we’ll recoup on the paintings. We already have great Rembrandts.”

There must be things that bother him in the museum or in Los Angeles’ flourishing art world. Ever cooperative, he tries to come up with something.

He confesses he makes “rhetorical laments over high auction prices, but I just go on looking for collectors who believe in the community. A museum is really a collection of collectors.”

There was, he admits, a problem with the Japanese pavilion, but it was fixed, sort of. The space was designed to show the art only under natural light as is done traditionally in Japanese homes. That was the way donor Price wanted it, but the public began complaining they couldn’t see when the sun went behind a cloud or building. Finally it was arranged that lights would click on automatically when a certain point of dimness was reached.

“The public hates it when they can’t see. Joe Price hates it when the lights come on.”

Finally he fesses up about what art issue really bothers him just now: For years, the comic strip “Apartment 3-G” has been his favorite. It’s beautifully drawn and he’d read it faithfully since his Navy days. Recently The Times canceled it and he is annoyed.

Very annoyed.