ARTS NOTES : California Legislators Will Get the Message on Arts Day

* Orange County will be represented Tuesday when about 200 arts leaders meet in Sacramento for the 15th annual Arts Day. Coordinated by the California Confederation of the Arts, an arts advocacy organization, the event provides an opportunity for the state’s cultural community to lobby legislators. Ken Goldman, development director for the Pacific Symphony, has appointments with four officials from Orange County: state Sens. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) and Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and Assemblymen Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) and Ross Johnson (R-La Habra). “I’m taking a message to our state legislators,” Goldman said, “about how important state support for the arts is and that they do what they can to sustain and possibly increase” the budget of the California Arts Council, which makes grants to arts groups.

* “Edward Hopper: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art,” which ends its run at the Newport Harbor Art Museum on March 17, already has drawn the second biggest audience of any exhibit in the museum’s 29-year history. During its eight-week exhibition period, “Hopper” has attracted nearly 30,000 visitors. The all-time attendance record at Newport Harbor is held by the 1983 exhibit “Edvard Munch: Expressionist Paintings 1900-1940,” which was seen by some 40,000 people. The Hopper exhibition consists of 65 oil paintings, 35 watercolors and 50 prints and drawings.

* The proposed Huntington Beach Art Center has “sold” the second of its three galleries to William and Lorraine McCune of Huntington Harbour, who paid $75,000 to have their family’s name on the exhibit space. The first gallery was sold for the same amount to FHP Health Care early last year. The donations go toward the $750,000 needed to turn a city-owned building in downtown Huntington Beach into the Art Center. So far, more than $300,000 has been raised, according to officials who plan to open the Center in the summer of 1992.

* Donald Bren, chairman of the Irvine Co., appears once again in Art & Antiques magazine’s annual list of the top 100 collectors in the United States. Quoted in the March issue, Bren, noting that his interest in art goes back more than 20 years, calls himself “a serious student, a passionate collector and an enthusiastic booster” of contemporary American works, and he boasts of his holdings: “It’s a sensational collection.” The magazine passes along a rumor that Bren recently acquired a “major” work by painter Willem de Kooning “to add to (his other de Koonings), along with the (Franz) Klines, (Mark) Rothkos, (Richard) Diebenkorns, (Arshile) Gorkys and (Jackson) Pollocks.”

* Eighteen of the 100 collectors cited by the magazine live in Southern California. Among the more famous are pop star Madonna (who says of a favorite painter, the fiercely autobiographical Frida Kahlo, “She was a drama queen, and I identify with that”); screen actor Steve Martin (who actually collects work by Helen Frankenthaler, the artist whose abstract painting “Renaissance” he burbles about nonsensically in his movie “L.A. Story”), and Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs (who increasingly prefers “those artists who express the political and social concerns of the community they live in”). Others include billionaire and former publishing mogul Walter Annenberg, Creative Artists Agency deal-maker Michael Ovitz, movie producer (“Die Hard,” “Lethal Weapon”) Joel Silver, former Toyota distributor Frederick R. Weisman (who has his own art foundation) and singer Andy Williams.

* The Orange County chapter of the American Institute of Architects will hold a symposium and round-table discussion on “Urban Design in Orange County: A Coming of Age” on March 21 at 6 p.m. at the OCAIA office, 3200 Park Center Drive, Suite 110, Costa Mesa. Speakers will include Christopher Leinberger of Robert Charles Lesser & Co.; Sanjoy Mazumdar, professor of Social Ecology at UC Irvine, and Ray Watson, vice chairman of the Irvine Co. Jeffrey Perlman, urban affairs writer for The Times Orange County Edition, will moderate. Tickets are $25 ($20 for AIA members, $10 for students and associate members). Reservations and information: (714) 557-7796.