Plans for New Home Put on Hold : Art: The larger Newport Harbor Art Museum may still be built, its director says, but a new capital campaign would depend on an economic turnaround.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum’s $50-million plan for a new building, already stalled by the lingering economic slump, was officially put on indefinite hold Thursday night by a unanimous vote of the museum’s trustees.

The door is still open to moving forward eventually with plans to build a new museum on 10 1/2 acres at MacArthur Boulevard and Coast Highway. Museum officials say the Irvine Co., owner of the property, has pledged to keep it available to the museum. Thursday’s vote also authorized architects Kohn Pedersen Fox to finish their designs for the site.

“We think the world is going to change,” said museum director Michael Botwinick. “It is really important to finish up what we started.” But, he added, a new capital campaign would be dependent on an economic turnaround, and neither he nor other museum officials would guess at a time frame.

Thursday’s vote further directed the museum staff to make a 90-day study of ways to expand the museum’s role in Orange County even without a new home. Areas to be explored include development of a satellite exhibit space, renovating the current facility, expanding the museum’s educational programming, and increasing the number and variety of exhibitions at the current site.

“If we can’t grow the physical building, there are other ways we can grow,” Botwinick said. “A whole variety of alternatives will be investigated.”

The museum will have to look to alternative sources of funds for such projects, as traditional sources remain tight. Officials revealed this week that the museum had borrowed $600,000 from its own endowment fund last summer to pay off a $552,707 deficit that had accumulated over several years. That deficit figure does not include an expected shortfall of $97,000 for fiscal 1991, which ended Sept. 30. The shortfall is expected even though the museum posted gains in both earned and contributed income during the year.

The funding possibilities for expanded museum offerings include corporate and community partnerships for off-site projects such as a satellite gallery, and the development of cooperative programming with other museums. Botwinick said that education projects are “attractive to a wider range of funding sources” than are exhibits or capital expansion.

Thursday’s vote to put the capital campaign on hold did not come as a surprise. Trustees and other officials have in recent months expressed increasing doubt over the museum’s plan to expand amid an economic slump that has dampened fund-raising prospects for arts groups everywhere.

Museum directors had begun looking for more elbow room back in mid-1985, when they decided that the museum needed more exhibition space. The museum’s current 23,000-square-foot home near Fashion Island, opened in 1977, does not have sufficient room to display temporary exhibitions and the permanent collection at the same time.

The directors first looked to a 3-acre plot next to the existing museum building, but plans to build there were tied to a $300-million expansion of Newport Center proposed by the Irvine Co., and that plan was rejected in a display of slow-growth sentiment by Newport Beach voters in November, 1986.

In February, 1987, the Irvine Co. offered the 10-acre site along Coast Highway as a “challenge gift”: To get title to the land, the museum would have to raise $10.5 million in cash. But fund raising stalled at $10 million, and the title was never transferred.

Meanwhile, in November of 1987, museum officials announced the results of an international search for an architect to design a new building: Renzo Piano of Genoa, known for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Menil Collection in Houston.

Preliminary drawings of Piano’s plans, unveiled in August, 1989, showed an innovative barrel-vaulted design that would be cut into the hillside to avoid violating local height restrictions. The response to the design was initially enthusiastic, but less than a year later, Piano lost the commission over assertions of escalating cost and insufficient gallery space.

Since then, the museum has retained Kohn Pedersen Fox, a New York-based designer of commercial high-rises, as a consultant. The firm has submitted several preliminary designs to the museum’s building committee, but none of them have been made public.

The decision to change architects and the stalling of the fund-raising campaign both occurred while the museum was without a director. Kevin Consey left in August, 1989, to become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; Botwinick, his successor, was not named until January, 1991.

Thursday’s vote came on the one-year anniversary of Botwinick’s arrival. Although plans for the new building still seemed solid when he arrived here, he said Friday that the vote to put the project on hold was not a “personal disappointment” to him.

“What we did” at Thursday’s board meeting, he said, “did not represent for me some kind of second prize.” Botwinick added that the meeting generated a great deal of discussion he characterized as “positive.”

The Newport Harbor Art Museum Through the Years 1962: Museum founded by 13 local art patrons. First location is on second floor of Balboa Pavilion. October, 1971: Museum moves to another temporary site, also on Balboa Peninsula. September, 1977: Current museum building opens at Newport Center, near Fashion Island. August, 1985: Deciding they need more space and a more prominent image, directors of the museum consider expansion. Officials look at 50 sites from San Clemente to Santa Ana and eventually consider expansion on 3 acres next to current site, as part of a proposed $300-million expansion of Newport Center. November, 1986: Museum plans are scuttled when Irvine voters reject the Newport Center expansion proposal. Search for an outside site resumes. February, 1987: Irvine Co. offers 10-acre site in Newport Beach, at Coast Highway and MacArthur Boulevard, as a “challenge gift,” provided museum can raise $10.5 million. The plan is to build an expanded museum that would house more galleries plus offices, storage, an auditorium, a sculpture garden, a restaurant and educational facilities. November, 1987: An 18-month search ends when Italian architect Renzo Piano is chosen over 100 candidates to design the new $20-million Newport Harbor Art Museum. October, 1988: Piano’s preliminary drawings are unveiled. Museum officials project a 1990 groundbreaking, 1992 completion. August, 1989: Piano’s plans are unveiled, showing a low-slung, massive structure with an undulating roof. May, 1990: Museum officials, concerned that Piano’s plan would cost too much and provide insufficient gallery space, say that they have asked Piano to redraw plans and that trustees also will look at plans submitted by several other architecture firms. July, 1990: Museum board votes to fire Piano and hires architect William Pedersen. Jan. 23, 1992: Museum board, faced with lingering economic recession and difficult fund-raising climate, votes to postpone campaign to construct new museum building.