Grants for O.C. Groups in Jeopardy : Finances: County Symphony and Newport Harbor Art Museum might not get state funding because of low rankings.

On top of recent financial problems and efforts to recover from a long absence of top administrators, the Newport Harbor Art Museum is now in jeopardy of losing state arts council funding.

The Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove also may not receive a California Arts Council grant, and four other prominent local arts groups may get smaller grants this year as a result of lowered rankings by council review panels announced this week.

The museum, which received $20,895 last year, and the orchestra, which received $3,387, “probably won’t receive” any funds for the 1992-93 fiscal year because their rankings have dropped below 3-minus, normally the cutoff on the council’s four-point scale, said Juan Carillo, the council’s deputy director of programs.

Last year the museum was ranked 3 and the orchestra was ranked at 3-minus by review panels, which assess artistic and organizational strengths and community outreach. Carillo could not explain why panels lowered both ranks this year to 2-plus and said explanations will not be available until August.

It is possible that the full council will raise the rankings when it meets in September to vote on the panel recommendations, Carillo said.

Newport Harbor director Michael Botwinick called the museum’s lowered rank a “miscarriage” and “incomprehensible” and said he will file a protest with the council.

“We have no idea why they made this decision. It’s not consistent with my perception of the progress the museum has made” he said. “I think it’s another form of Orange County-bashing.”

Orange County Symphony officials were unavailable for comment.

A state council grant does not necessarily make or break an institution but does help generate private funds and is a critical stamp of approval.

The St. Joseph Ballet Company--which typically wins a top score of 4--the Master Chorale of Orange County, the Grove Shakespeare Festival and the Laguna Playhouse received significantly lower rankings (though each is still at or above the 3-minus cutoff). The rankings of the Laguna Art Museum and the Pacific Symphony increased slightly.

The rankings of the Pacific Chorale, Opera Pacific, the South Coast Symphony, South Coast Repertory, the Laguna Poets, the Irvine Fine Arts Center and the Fullerton Civic Light Opera all stayed about the same as last year, at or above 3-minus. (The panel rating the Orange County Philharmonic Society meets next week).

Even with a higher ranking, however, a group could receive less money this year. Seeking to ease a $10.7-billion state budget deficit, legislators have recommended cutting the arts council’s budget by 10%. The council currently receives $14.6 million in state funds.

Botwinick’s remarks about the museum’s progress notwithstanding, the lowering of its ranking is the latest in a series of recent blows to the 30-year-old institution.

Three years ago, the museum was ranked 4 for artistic accomplishments and managerial skills and 3 for outreach programs and was given $60,000, the second highest arts council grant in Orange County that year. The following year, however, the council criticized the museum’s outreach programs and reduced its grant to $19,000. The museum’s grant last year increased, but only slightly.

Meanwhile, the museum has been plagued by scuttled expansion plans and staff cutbacks and has generated fewer of its own exhibitions.

Former director Kevin E. Consey left the museum in November, 1989, to become head of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Newport Harbor had no director until Botwinick arrived in January of 1991.

In January of this year, faced with the lingering economic recession and a difficult fund-raising climate, the museum board voted to postpone indefinitely a $40-million building campaign that had been widely heralded.

Then, the following month, Botwinick announced that he was cutting the museum staff by nearly one-fifth, by four full-time and two part-time employees.

Among those to go was assistant curator Marilu Knode, who had been responsible for the museum’s New California Artists exhibition series and who was co-curator, with Anne Ayres, of last year’s “Third Newport Biennial: Mapping Histories,” one of the few major exhibits developed in-house by the museum since curator Paul Schimmel’s departure for Los Angeles in April of 1990. Bruce Guenther replaced Schimmel in December of 1991.

Botwinick said the layoffs would save the museum more than $150,000 over two years. Around the same time, officials revealed that the museum had been obliged to borrow $600,000 from its own endowment fund to pay off a $552,707 deficit that had accumulated over several years. That figure did not include a $97,000 shortfall from fiscal 1991, which ended Sept. 30. The museum’s operating budget is $2 million.

DEADLINE NEARS

A tax law giving a break to high-income art donors runs out Tuesday. F6

Times staff writer Cathy Curtis contributed to this report.