O’Connor Pushes 2nd Arts Festival : Culture: The mayor hopes to organize an exhibit of Russian treasures for the fall, partly to help finance her dream of a central library on the bay.

Seeking to recapture one of her mayoralty’s brightest moments and leave a lasting political legacy, San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor hopes to organize another Russian arts exhibit here this fall to help fund a new central library, The Times has learned.

O’Connor, the guiding force behind a 1989 Soviet arts festival that was a popular, artistic and financial success, is negotiating with Russian cultural officials for permission to display exotic gold exhibits from the Kremlin’s Armory Museum in San Diego sometime before she leaves office in December.

Any profits would be used to help finance a new bayfront library, the project O’Connor envisions as the most enduring accomplishment of her 6 1/2-year tenure as mayor, her aides said Tuesday.

“This would be a tremendous cultural benefit to San Diego that would again shine the international spotlight on our city,” O’Connor said. “It would enhance San Diego’s reputation as a true city of the world. But, just as important, it could also help us build a new library.”

The gold treasures from the Kremlim that are being sought for the exhibit include ceremonial chalices and goblets, religious vestments and icons, jeweled Gospel and prayer book covers, decorative boxes and elaborate painting frames, as well as cameos, rings, medallions and other jewelry of Russia’s czars.

A similar exhibit toured Western Europe in the late 1980s, but O’Connor’s staff hopes that the local exhibit will be larger, including more objects chosen for both aesthetic and historical interest. Although no decisions on sites have been made, the Museum of Art in Balboa Park and the B Street Pier downtown are being examined as likely venues.

Russian arts officials have been “very optimistic, very encouraging” in discussions so far, O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey said. A letter to O’Connor from Irina Rodimsteva, director of the State Museums of the Kremlim, outlined the Russians’ willingness to allow the exhibit to be shown in San Diego, pending agreement on security arrangements, transportation costs and other logistic details.

Although the Russians’ cooperation has reinforced O’Connor’s belief that organizing the exhibit on such short notice is feasible, local arts officials interviewed Tuesday questioned the timing, financing and even the content of the proposed exhibit.

“This really is her baby, but I don’t see how she can pull it together so quickly, or understand where she’s going to get the money to do it,” said one San Diego arts executive who, like others interviewed about O’Connor’s plan, asked not to be named.

“ Another Russian exhibit?” another arts official said. “I’m not sure how that’s going to go over.”

In the early stages of planning the 1989 festival, O’Connor heard similar objections, yet in the end drew accolades from many of her initial critics for producing an enormously successful event that drew record crowds and largely favorable reviews.

The three-week 1989 festival, held primarily in Balboa Park’s theaters and museums, was financed with $3 million in public funds and $3 million in private donations. Revenue from the nearly 218,000 tickets sold to the festival’s various performances and exhibitions helped the city recoup its investment.

Although financial arrangements and many other details concerning this fall’s possible exhibit remain unresolved, O’Connor spokesman Downey said city officials hope to fund it primarily with private donations, with an eye toward generating profits that could be allocated to the library project.

“It’s a cultural event, but we also see this as something that could serve as a fund-raiser for the library,” Downey said. “That’s an important part of this whole thing. We want it to make money.”

Some local arts officials, however, scoffed at O’Connor’s notion of using such an exhibit to help build her proposed “storybook” library--a project that has been stalled by the San Diego Unified Port District’s refusal to dedicate O’Connor’s preferred bayfront site on Lane Field to the city.

“You’re never going to get a library built that way,” one said. “You’d be lucky to just break even.” Any money raised by the Russian arts exhibit, the official added, would be “symbolic at best” in financing a library.

“I think the mayor wants to go out on a high note--that’s what it comes down to,” another arts administrator said. “She figures, it worked last time--why not again?”

While the centerpiece of the 1989 festival was an exhibition of Russia’s jeweled Imperial Faberge eggs, the event also included plays, marionette shows and performances by Georgian folk dancing and singing ensembles.

In contrast, the exhibit O’Connor hopes to stage this fall would deal strictly with the Kremlim’s gold treasures, a scaled-down format that lends itself to the quicker planning necessary if the event is to become a reality in the six months before O’Connor retires.

“It’s a short planning period, but a workable one, partly because we’re not starting from square one this time,” Downey said.

O’Connor and some San Diego arts leaders, Downey noted, developed a good working relationship with Kremlin museums director Rodimsteva when she was here for the 1989 festival. The Russians have been eager to take part in another arts exhibit here, since political strife in the then-Soviet Union forced the last-minute cancellation of one of the major components of the 1989 festival: an exhibit of 30 rare, sacred icons from the Republic of Soviet Georgia that had been billed as “Masterworks of Metal.”

“There’s always been that open invitation,” said Hal Fischer, director of exhibitions at the Timken Gallery, which organized the canceled 1989 event.

Although O’Connor faces no firm deadline, commitments from the Russians and local officials probably must be secured within several months to make a fall exhibit feasible, Downey said.

“The one absolute deadline we’re working against is December,” Downey said, referring to the month when Mayor O’Connor becomes citizen O’Connor. “That guarantees that the negotiations won’t drag on forever.”