Film Program Eliminated by Museum : Arts: Income falls 10% short of budget. Expansion at La Jolla site, however, expected to be carried out as planned.

At a time when the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art is continuing to take in funds for a proposed expansion of its Prospect Street site in La Jolla and the 1992 opening of an annex downtown, operating income is down by nearly 10%, forcing the museum to suspend its critically acclaimed film program.

The program, which was begun in 1978 by film curator Greg Kahn, who will be leaving the museum when the program ends in March, has presented about 50 films annually, many of them foreign and vintage films not often screened locally. Outside presenters of film projects like the popular Festival of Animation will continue to lease the museum’s Sherwood Auditorium to show films until the facility is closed next December as part of the expansion.

“There’s good news and bad news at the museum,” said Charles Castle, the museum’s associate director. In the 1991 fiscal year, which ended June 30, the museum received $2.2 million in contributions to its 50th anniversary fund-raising drive to pay for the expansion. At the same time, it also had a shortfall of $150,000 in its operating budget of $2.3 million because of reduced income from contributions and from lower attendance and ticket sales for special events, as well as reduced sales in the gift shop.

The goal of the 50th-anniversary drive is $10.4 million, Castle said, of which $2 million will be added to the museum’s endowment. To date, $6.7 million has been raised in the campaign that was first announced in May, 1987.

The suspension of the film program is part of an “overall evaluation and reduction that is taking place due to current fiscal challenges faced by SDMoCA and other arts organizations in the community,” the museum’s release also stated, and Castle confirmed that the museum has been cutting costs by reducing the number of annual exhibits and changing the health insurance policy for employees, for example, Castle said.

“We publish one less newsletter per year. Exhibition slots are slightly longer than before. We have examined all our expenses top to bottom, to make sure that we’re as lean on the expense side as we can possibly be,” Castle said. In fact, the museum now sometimes presents exhibitions for as long as four months, nearly twice the length of shows a few years ago.

The film program, which has never been a profit-making program is down in the neighborhood of 35% in admissions, Castle said. It costs the museum about $50,000 annually, with revenue of about $30,000 from ticket sales.

Kahn said he was surprised when he learned that the program was ending when he was informed Nov. 1, and he will end his 14-year tenure at the museum with a program called “Parting Glances.” The 12-part series, which begins Jan. 8 and continues on consecutive Wednesday evenings through March 25, features a selection of Kahn’s personal favorites, ranging from the classic 1945 French film “Children of Paradise” to Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1975 “Dersu Uzala” to Igmar Bergman’s 1957 “Wild Strawberries.”

Museum director Hugh Davies said that the museum plans to reinstate the film program in the expanded La Jolla facility when it reopens in mid-1994.