Beall Paints Grand Future for Museum : Art: Newport Harbor’s new board president exudes vigor. She says ‘the past is behind’ and steadfastly backs commitment to cutting-edge art.

This may not be the easiest year to take the reins as Newport Harbor Art Museum’s board president, but Joan Frances Beall didn’t hesitate to grab hold with both hands when she was unanimously elected to the post last month.

“It’s a nice time in my life to come to something like this,” said Beall, who is 50 and has been a museum trustee for five years. “I come with a perspective that takes a little bit of age. . . . And I know how special Newport Harbor is, particularly having lived all over the country in areas that have nothing” comparable.

In the last two years, the museum lost director Kevin E. Consey and chief curator Paul Schimmel, who took similar posts in Chicago and Los Angeles, respectively.

Last year, controversy clouded the institution during a series of events that culminated in the trustees’ firing of renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano as designer of its proposed multimillion-dollar new building.

In January, after 14 months without a director, Michael Botwinick, former director of two major East Coast museums, was hired to fill the vacancy. But Botwinick has just stepped into the job, and a chief curator has yet to be hired. Moreover, in the middle of shaky economic climate, particularly for the arts, the museum is preparing to jump-start a building campaign that has been stalled since Consey left in late 1989.

An optimist who has been a Newport Harbor patron since 1977, Beall says that she believes the institution is in a period of renewal and that the county is ready and able to support its building campaign.

“I feel as though this summer is a regrouping time,” said Beall, who has served on the board’s executive committee for the last two years, a post she also holds at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where she has been a trustee for five years. “Everything is getting in order. The past is behind, and we’re pulling up our socks and rolling up our sleeves.”

Some current and former colleagues concur that Beall is the right choice to preside over an institution whose focus is contemporary art.

“I see (her appointment) as very good news,” said Consey, now director of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and whose tenure at Newport Harbor overlapped with Beall’s for about three years.

“She’s smart, she’s committed, she’s interested in contemporary art,” he said, “and she is, to my recollection, one the most consistent donors to the museum, since even before she was a board member. She and her husband (Donald R. Beall, chief executive officer of Rockwell International Corp.) were consistently large givers.”

Beall is an “excellent” choice to take the helm at this critical juncture, said trustee Eugene C. White, head of the board’s nominating committee, who also lauded her longstanding involvement. “She has some great organizational talent” as well, White said.

Beall, who devotes her time to charitable work and is also on the boards of Planned Parenthood in Orange and San Bernardino counties and Children’s Hospital of Orange County, is a tall, elegantly slim, soft-spoken woman with a warm, direct gaze. During a recent interview at the museum, she pointed to Botwinick’s appointment as the key indication that the museum is marching forward.

A member of the search committee since it was formed in 1989, she picks out for top praise Botwinick’s “business background.”

Between 1974 and 1986, Botwinick served as director of New York’s Brooklyn Museum and then at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. After those stints, he worked for 3 1/2 years in commercial art, first as senior vice president of a company that owns two New York galleries, then handling business investments in the art field for a holding company for Chicago-based galleries.

She said that while his background may not be heavy on contemporary art (he has a master’s degree from Columbia University in medieval art, for instance), his interest in the area is obvious to the board. She also dismissed as “gossip” reports in the art world that his resignation from the Corcoran was prompted by staff dissatisfaction with his aggressive, hands-on management style.

“I find him aggressive,” Beall said, “but I call it a plus. In Newport Harbor’s vision we have to be aggressive, and I find his enthusiasm and brightness exactly what we want.” Botwinick has been “actively working toward” hiring a chief curator, who “we feel very confident will be in place by the end of summer.”

Beall admits some concern that the effort to resurrect the building campaign may be hampered by a loss of momentum and compounded by hard economic times. Nonetheless, she is optimistic about her task.

By the end of the year, she said, the board and Botwinick will be ready to begin the fund drive again after they decide whether to develop preliminary designs by New York architects Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates or to start from scratch, which might mean launching a design competition.

“I think by the time we’re ready to gear up, the economy will start its upward swing and maybe timing will be with us,” she said.

Beall said that $50 million to fund and endow the new building, the figure the museum has been using, “is probably a bit high.” She said she would not speculate about construction or other costs without completed blueprints. A museum spokeswoman said “a whole new building campaign” will be outlined and no figure has been determined. But, Beall said, the “county is ready and the timing is perfect” for a major capital campaign.”

“Our studies show that the community is up to this,” she said. She cited the $73-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, which opened in 1986, and Hoag Hospital’s $22-million cancer outpatient center, which opened this year, both paid for with contributions from individuals and businesses. She said museum officials also will make a “concerted effort” to look outside the county to raise some of the building funds for the museum, which has an international reputation.

David S. Tappan Jr., chairman of Fluor Daniel, “is going to continue as head of (the building campaign), and he is very enthusiastic about getting started again,” Beall said.

How will the museum put behind it last year’s controversies involving the ousting of architect Renzo Piano, after the museum paid Piano $1 million for designs that the board then decided were inadequate? “I think we’ve done it,” Beall said firmly.

“These things do happen,” she said. “One of the worse things that could have happened would have been to build the wrong building. It’s our responsibility as the board to be sure that what we build is precisely what the museum should have.”

A third-generation Californian, Beall was born in Sacramento. Her exposure to the arts began as a child. “My mother had majored in art at (UC) Berkeley, and she always took art courses. She used to paint, sculpt, watercolor, do whatever. And my family was always interested in the performing arts.”

Studying at San Jose State University to become a teacher, she left before graduating to move east with her husband, who attended graduate school in Pennsylvania. After that, to accommodate Donald Beall’s career, the couple moved around the country “like corporate Gypsies” while they raised two boys, now both adults.

Beall, who lives in Corona del Mar, said she collects some art, works by living artists mostly (including Tom Holland and Ed Moses), and that she keeps current on contemporary art by reading, browsing galleries and traveling around the world with her husband.

She said her vision for the museum as it moves into the ‘90s--and, if all goes as planned, into a larger building--includes increased membership and outreach to multicultural communities, an expanded exhibition and acquisition budget, and an even greater emphasis on education, particularly as schools cut back on art education.

“That’s why the endowment (currently at $2 million, which officials plan to increase as part of the building campaign) is so very important,” she said. “Not just for safekeeping, but to expand the budget” to support more programs.

She said the museum has a responsibility to show “mainstream” art, such as the recent Edward Hopper exhibition, one of the institution’s most popular shows. But she stands steadfastly behind its commitment to “cutting-edge” contemporary art, no matter how controversial it may be.

“To me that’s how art should be. The more exposure to cutting-edge art that Orange County has, the better.

“A long time ago, my son (Jeff, a Los Angeles-based painter who graduated from the California Arts Institute in Valencia) said, ‘Mom, you look at art not as if you want to take it home and put it over your bed. You look at it to see if it’s interesting to you and if it stimulates your brain. The criterion is not that you want to live with it. The criterion is does it make you think. And if an artist has made you think, he has succeeded.’

“And I agree. I’m beginning to understand what he says, and I agree. And I think that’s what Newport Harbor does well: It stimulates the brain; it makes your head work a little bit.”