John Cage Is Honored at Arts Gala : Awards: The composer is cited for lifetime achievement at first Weisman ceremony. Artists, curators and a museum chief split $240,000.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Awards got off to a splashy start Thursday night in a gala celebration at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Five artists, five curators and one museum director won a total of $240,000 in the first round of the new program, designed to honor outstanding achievements in the field of contemporary art.

Two special awards offered the smallest checks--$5,000 each--but the most prestige. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to avant-garde composer John Cage. “He asked us to consider all things as music” and “caused us to listen to the world in a different way,” said singer Joan La Barbara, who presented the award to Cage and performed “Eight Whiskus,” a work he composed for her in 1985.

Dennis Barrie, director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, received the other special prize, the Service to the Field Award. Barrie, who was indicted for exhibiting a controversial show of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, was acquitted of obscenity charges in October in a highly publicized trial.

In making the award to Barrie, John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, noted the ironic timing of the Cincinnati cause celebre. The uproar came at a moment when Eastern Europe was casting off governmental restraints “in pursuit of dreams of free expression for which America was the model,” he said.

Citing Barrie as a model of strength, conviction and good humor when he became a target of right-wing zealotry, Walsh commented, “Who knows how many of us would have stood up to such community pressure.”

“About a year ago I was indicted. Now I get a Lichtenstein,” Barrie quipped when he accepted the award, which includes a painted bronze sculpture, “Yellow Brushstroke,” by Roy Lichtenstein. Barrie said that he hadn’t chosen the battle but that “there is only one right way (to act) when it comes to freedom.”

He thanked a largely predictable list of supporters: the eight jurors who acquitted him, his staff, his family and board members. But Barrie also thanked “the people of Cincinnati who do believe in freedom, who do believe in museums and the wonderful things they do.”

The bulk of the money, four $50,000 awards, went to artists whose works were selected for purchase by museum curators. Joe Goode’s 1963 painting, “Small Space (Milk Bottle),” was chosen by curator Lisa Phillips for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

“The Reign of Narcissism,” a roomlike installation by Barbara Bloom, was added to the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art at the behest of curator Ann Goldstein.

Walter Hopps, curator of the Menil Collection in Houston, selected Haim Steinbach’s “fresh,” a 1960 mixed-media construction.

A six-part metal sculpture made in 1989 by Donald Judd was the choice of Laila Twigg-Smith of the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu.

The curators who selected the purchase prizes served as judges for three curatorial awards of $10,000. Two of these prizes honored exhibitions featuring a single artist. Curators Marge Goldwater and Michael Compton won an award for “Marcel Broodthaers,” a retrospective of the Belgian artist’s work that originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and appeared in Los Angeles at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Explaining that the two curators would share the $10,000 award, master of ceremonies Henry T. Hopkins said, “Those of you who know curatorial salaries know that ($5,000) is something.”

Curator Kynaston McShine was honored for organizing “Andy Warhol: A Retrospective,” the first comprehensive review of the Pop artist’s work, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In his catalogue essay for the Warhol show, McShine stated that despite the artist’s flashy public persona, he was “a monument impossible to ignore” in the art world. “I just accept (the award) for him in terms of being best director,” McShine said.

The curatorial award for the best group or theme show of 1990 went to conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth and curator Charlotta Kotik for “The Brooklyn Museum Collection: The Play of the Unmentionable.” The exhibition examined the concept of censorship in a show of about 100 works chosen by Kosuth from the museum’s collection.

“Recognition from one’s professional peers is so gratifying that this is very meaningful to me,” Kotik said. She and Kosuth (who did not attend the ceremony) will share the $10,000 award.

The new award program--intended as an annual affair--is administered by the Los Angeles-based Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, which was established in 1982 by Weisman, an art collector and former owner of Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors Inc.

Hopkins, who recently resigned as foundation director to become chairman of the UCLA art department, explained to the crowd that Weisman had originally planned to build a museum for his vast collection of contemporary art. He considered various possibilities, including refurbishing Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. But Weisman eventually abandoned the search for a building and put foundation funds into programs such as exhibitions, workshops and the new awards.