UCLA Near Agreement to Manage Hammer Museum of Art : Galleries: UC regents approve proposal. Income from museum’s bond holdings would cover most operating costs.

The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and UCLA are in final negotiations for an agreement that would result in the university’s art department assuming management of the museum in Westwood by early 1993.

The announcement was made at a Friday afternoon news conference at the museum. The University of California Board of Regents approved the action, which has been in negotiation for more than a year, at a Friday meeting in San Francisco.

Under the agreement, UCLA would operate the museum for as long as 99 years, and would eventually move its Wight Art Gallery and Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts into the 79,000-square-foot facility.

The museum, which opened in November, 1990, was a pet project of Hammer’s and was designed as a showcase for the late industrialist’s art collection, which was amassed with Hammer’s money and with funds from his Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Occidental provided construction financing for the $90-million facility and for an endowment to operate the museum. Hammer, who devoted much of his last years to the building of the museum, died in December, 1990, just weeks after the museum opened.

“This partnership makes good sense and good logic for both the museum and the university,” said Ray Irani, president of Occidental Petroleum. “During the 19 months since the museum’s been open, it’s made significant strides. But as Dr. Hammer always said, there’s so much more that can be done. . . . We believe the museum will flourish working with UCLA.”

Museum and university officials said that only the articles and bylaws of the agreement need to be finalized and that litigation against the Hammer estate should have no effect on the plan.

Joan Weiss, a niece of Hammer’s late wife, Frances, filed a lawsuit against the museum and Hammer before his death, alleging that much, if not most, of the holdings acquired during the couple’s 33-year marriage is community property. Frances Weiss Hammer named Weiss as the sole beneficiary of her estate. The disputed property includes the art collection, which Hammer bequeathed to his foundation and which subsequently has been given to the museum. According to attorney Richard Cleary, who is representing Weiss, the total amount of the claim, which is not restricted to the artworks, is between $300 million and $400 million.

University officials, facing a severe state budget crunch, said no additional state monies will be needed to operate the museum. Instead, income from the museum’s bond portfolio, estimated at $3 million annually in the first two years of the agreement, would cover most operating costs.

Arthur Groman, a member of the Occidental Petroleum board and the attorney who represented the museum in negotiations, said there is no requirement for the Hammer Foundation to support the museum.

The agreement includes stipulations made by Hammer that mandate that a certain percentage of his collection must be on display at all times and that no part of the collection be sold without approval of the foundation, the museum and Occidental Petroleum.

The quality of Hammer’s collection has long been questioned, however, and the museum’s initial exhibitions, most resulting from Hammer’s longtime association with what was then the Soviet Union, have had a mixed reception from critics.

The museum’s art collection includes the Codex Hammer--a collection of writing and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci--and works by Rembrandt, Vincent Van Gogh, Goya, Monet and Rubens.

Times staff writer Michelle Quinn contributed to this story.