Museum Orders Layoffs : It’s the Latest Setback for Newport Harbor Art Institution

The Newport Harbor Art Museum is laying off nearly one-fifth of its staff--four full-time and two part-time employees--to help reduce an accumulated and anticipated deficit of more than $650,000, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The layoffs, which already have started, are the first by a major Orange County arts institution in recent memory.

Museum spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber would not identify the positions being eliminated but said they include professional and support staff “in all areas of the museum”--administrative, curatorial, education and development.

The layoffs will be staggered but will be completed by the end of March, Gaiber said, and are expected to save the museum $150,000 by September, 1993. The museum has an annual budget of $2 million. Before the layoffs started Monday, 28 full-time and nine part-time workers were employed there.

Gaiber said that museum director Michael Botwinick was directed by the board to reduce the budget, but that the staff cuts were his own idea. Botwinick is attending the annual Assn. of American Museums conference in Fort Worth and was unavailable for comment Thursday, Gaiber said.

The announced layoffs would mark the latest in a series of financial setbacks at the 30-year-old museum, which enjoyed a national reputation for its exhibitions of Abstract Expressionist and cutting-edge contemporary art in the ‘80s under the leadership of director Kevin Consey, who left for Chicago in 1989, and chief curator Paul Schimmel, who left shortly thereafter to become chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Newport Harbor’s last audited financial statement, from September, 1990, showed an accumulated deficit of $552,707. The museum has borrowed $600,000 from its $1.8-million endowment fund to pay off this shortfall. The debt is to be repaid to the endowment on a regular schedule, Gaiber said.

An additional $97,000 shortfall has been projected for fiscal 1991, and fiscal 1992 also is expected to produce a deficit, Gaiber said.

Less than two weeks ago, the museum’s trustees voted unanimously to postpone indefinitely a $50-million campaign for a new building and endowment, pending a turnaround of the economy. Museum officials will not speculate when the campaign--widely heralded when announced in 1988--might be rekindled.

Gaiber said the museum foresees no further staff reductions and, so far, has planned no reduction of museum exhibitions, hours or educational programs.

Asked about the impact of the cuts on staff morale, Gaiber said: “It’s difficult for those who are leaving and for those who remain.”

She stressed the impact of Orange County’s negative economic climate on the decision. “As the county goes, we go,” she said. “It’s a trickle-down effect. The Irvine Co. has cut its staff. People working for (such) companies are our supporters.”

Times staff writer Zan Dubin contributed to this report.