Annenberg to Give L.A. Art Museum $10 Million

Walter H. Annenberg will give the Los Angeles County Museum of Art $10 million, the largest single monetary commitment the museum has ever received, museum director Earl A. Powell said Wednesday.

The announcement came one day after the philanthropist and publisher bequeathed his $1-billion art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The donation to Southern California’s premier public art museum will be distributed over five years, in $2-million allotments beginning this year. Although Annenberg placed no restrictions on the gift, the money will be evenly divided between acquisitions of artworks and the museum’s endowment, which now stands at about $19 million, Powell said. Annenberg funds will be used to purchase Impressionist and Postimpressionist works because they are the philanthropist’s favorite periods and the weakest area of the museum’s collection, the director said.

“The importance of the gift cannot be underestimated,” Powell said. “In the present context of philanthropy, the museum is very lucky. This would be a generous gift at any time, but the fact that it was made in a recessionary period, when gifts of artworks and money to cultural institutions have slowed down tremendously, makes it very special. We would be appreciative at any time, but the gift is particularly meaningful now.”

Annenberg, who celebrated his 83rd birthday on Wednesday with his wife, Leonore, was traveling and unavailable for comment. In a prepared statement released by the museum, Annenberg said, “Leonore and I are extremely pleased to make this gift to . . . an institution whose leadership I deeply respect. We are hopeful that it will have a constructive impact on the museum.”

The Annenberg gift presents the museum with new buying opportunities, Powell said. “We may build a war chest (instead of spending the money immediately). That’s a luxury we haven’t had, and it will be something to think about. But if an opportunity arises, we will take it,” he said.

“We hope that this will be the beginning of something,” Powell said, indicating that Annenberg might bestow additional gifts on the museum in the future.

Annenberg, who made his fortune in publishing, started TV Guide in 1953 and turned it into the largest-circulation magazine in the United states. He sold his Triangle Publications empire, including TV Guide, Seventeen and the Daily Racing Form, to Rupert Murdoch in 1988 for $3 billion.

Annenberg’s philanthropy has been directed at other educational and cultural institutions. He has established Annenberg schools for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and USC, as well as the Annenberg Washington Program in Communication Policy Studies of Northwestern University, based in Washington. Last year he gave $50 million to the United Negro College Fund.

Several art museums have benefited from Annenberg’s largess during the last four years. He gave London’s National Gallery $5 million in 1988 for the restoration and air-conditioning of its French Impressionist and Postimpressionist galleries. In 1989, Annenberg donated $15 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and $5 million each to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Philadelphia Museum of Art--the three museums that were thought to be front-runners in an informal competition for his collection.

Southern California art lovers who had hoped that Annenberg would bequeath his collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art were bitterly disappointed when he decided in favor of Met, where he served on the board of trustees from 1974 to 1981 and where his wife is a board member. Among the competitors, Los Angeles was a dark-horse contender whose claim was based on a recent exhibition of the collection at the County Museum of Art and the fact that the Annenbergs have long displayed the collection at their home in Rancho Mirage.

Powell said that Annenberg was pleased with the reception of his collection when it was shown in Los Angeles, but he had never intended the paintings to stay here. While most insiders believed that the collection would ultimately go to an East Coast museum where the Annenbergs have deeper roots, Southern California’s loss has been seen by some cultural critics as one more example of the area’s failure to hold on to its artistic riches.

Walter C. Arensberg’s collection of 20th-Century and pre-Columbian art, for example, was destined for UCLA in the 1940s, but it went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art after a dispute over a building. Joseph H. Hirshhorn considered installing his collection at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills before he gave it to the Smithsonian Institution, which built a museum for it in Washington.

Edward G. Robinson’s collection of Impressionist and Postimpressionist paintings was lent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1956, then sold the following year as part of a divorce settlement. During the recent art market boom, Los Angeles lost several prized collections at auction, including those of Hal B. Wallis, William and Edith Mayer Goetz, Edwin Janss, Billy Wilder and the Harry A. Franklin family.

The County Museum of Art has attracted longstanding support from such major patrons as the Ahmanson Foundation and Anna Bing Arnold, and it has received significant gifts over the years.