UCLA, Hammer Museum Consider Closer Ties : Arts: ‘Friendly discussions’ could result in university taking a major role in the museum’s operations.

Officials of UCLA and the art museum set up by the late industrialist Armand Hammer are conducting confidential talks that could result in the university taking a major role in the operations of the Westwood museum, The Times has learned.

The preliminary discussions are said to be exploring a variety of cooperative options--from UCLA assuming most programming and curatorial operations of the museum to occasional UCLA-organized exhibitions at the Hammer and student use of some of its facilities.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said the talks had been initiated in such secrecy that it remains unclear who proposed them. In addition to a top-level meeting known to have occurred in April, sources said Wednesday, there have been a series of formal and informal meetings involving museum and UCLA officials over the last month.

“There are friendly discussions going on,” said Henry Hopkins, the newly named head of UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery and currently director of the Weisman Art Foundation. “The extent (of the talks) is totally unclarified at this point.”

“The idea that we should work together in some form with a major university within walking distance is well worth (pursuing),” said Stephen Garrett, the Hammer museum’s director, who noted that the museum and UCLA have held talks earlier on a variety of matters. “Beyond that, I don’t know if there is anything very precise that I can say. It’s all very preliminary and abstract.”

According to sources close to the situation, the negotiations grew out of a desire by officials of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which provided construction financing and an initial endowment for the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, to bring to a close a series of long-running controversies about the museum and the quality of its collection.

Occidental officials, who have no direct control over the museum operation under terms of trust documents signed by Hammer before he died late last year, are also said to have urged Hammer museum officials to strike a deal with UCLA to lend a note of academic legitimacy to the Hammer Museum.

It was the personal interest by Occidental’s new chairman Ray Irani, said sources, that led to a meeting at Occidental headquarters late last month attended by UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, Irani and Michael Hammer, grandson of Armand Hammer. Michael Hammer has taken over administrative duties at the museum and at the privately incorporated Armand Hammer Foundation.

The sources, who include individuals with direct knowledge of the situation both at UCLA and at the museum, said it remains unclear what relationship may grow out of the talks. One source said the negotiations are at such a preliminary stage that the principals might be scared off by public disclosure of the talks.

Andrea Rich, a UCLA vice chancellor thought to be directly involved in the negotiations, declined to comment. “We have had, over time, lots of different relationships and discussions with the Hammer because of their close proximity to us,” she said. “There is nothing to comment upon at this moment.”

Said Arthur Groman, Armand Hammer’s longtime personal attorney: “Occidental and UCLA are principal neighbors and very much interested in Westwood and environs. They do talk to one another from time to time. There is nothing specific, whatsoever, to report at this time. I can say nothing further.”

Since well before it opened, the Hammer museum has been troubled by court challenges to whether Occidental had the right to finance it and a bitter fight over the ownership of the Hammer art collection.

The museum, which opened last November, has been panned by critics because its collection consists entirely of Hammer’s personal art holdings--bought with a mix of Occidental and Hammer’s own money. The collection has been consistently assailed as being of less than museum quality.

After an initial run as the West Coast venue for an acclaimed show of work by the late Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich, the Hammer museum has hosted a series of lesser exhibitions. In the coming months, its schedule includes an show of graphics by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that, critics said, is a fairly standard packaged show from the San Diego Museum of Art. The museum has also scheduled a shared exhibition of work by contemporary Mexican painters with the commercial Iturralde Gallery. The Mexican show will be called “Three Decades of Mexican Painting, 1950-1980,” to open Oct. 2 and run until Nov. 11.

While Garrett declined to discuss the status of the talks among Occidental, the Hammer Museum and UCLA, he said the museum is starting to plan for a reorganization of its galleries that could dovetail with the university acquiring a major role in the museum’s operation. In the reorganization, the museum’s permanent collection--Hammer’s personal artworks--would be shifted from the 5,000 square feet of prime gallery area they now occupy to the 4,000-square-foot space currently reserved for visiting exhibitions.

Garrett also said the museum was reviewing ways to identify “latitude” in the ways it complies with a series of highly restrictive conditions placed on the museum by Hammer documents that transferred ownership of the art collection to the museum. The documents establish percentages of Hammer’s art that must be displayed, prohibit the museum from ever selling off any of the Hammer collection and forbid display of related artworks--individual loaned works or visiting exhibitions--interspersed with the original Hammer holdings.

Asked if this meant the museum is studying ways to break the terms of the Hammer restrictive covenants, Garrett insisted the museum is not seeking “loopholes” in the documents. But, he said, “my instinct is that there is probably a fair amount of latitude if one looked for it.”