Travel Broadens Interest, Base for Arts Groups

More exciting than bungee jumping, Maggie Price says of her predominant passion, opera.

Wait a minute. At seventy-something, Price has bungee-jumped? “Last March, off a bridge in New Zealand,” Price says so matter-of-factly she might as well be talking about last night’s pot roast.

But her 150-foot free fall didn’t compare to the trips she annually stages for supporters of Opera Pacific, she says. “They’re educational and entertaining; they broaden our experience like nothing else.”

Like other local arts organizations--the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, the Laguna Art Museum--Opera Pacific uses travel to expand members’ horizons, promote camaraderie and raise funds for operating expenses.

Come Aug. 12, 20 opera buffs--Newport Mayor Fred Turner and his wife, Celia, among them--will depart on a weeklong jaunt to Sante Fe for its annual opera festival.

Tour-goers will pay $1,645 per person to participate in five nights of opera, an excursion to Bandolier National Park and dinner at some of the city’s most popular spots.

“It’s the second year for the trip,” says Price, who is chairwoman of Opera Pacific’s Tour Guild. “The price includes a $100 donation, so Opera Pacific ends up with $2,000, and we end up with a finer appreciation of opera.”

Price has also also led opera lovers on two European trips. And in the fall, she will take 20 people on Opera Pacific’s sixth annual trek to San Francisco. “They come back with a better understanding of opera, and we hope they share that with friends,” Price says.

When 12 members of the Fellows’ support group of the Bowers Museum depart for an East African safari with paleo-anthropologist Mary Leakey on Aug. 20, the museum will have added about $10,000 to its coffers.

Price for the trip is $10,000 per person, says Patricia House, chairwoman of the Fellows and director of development for the museum. “Roughly, Mary Leakey gets $1,000 and the Bowers gets $1,000.

“The trips help us provide special incentive for Fellows support,” House says. The Fellows pay minimum annual dues of $1,000.

“During our trips, we connect members with extensions of the museum family. The world’s museums involve us with some of the most interesting and creative people you can imagine.”

The trek to central Tanzania, where Leakey, 79, is trying to preserve the site of her discovery of thousands of rock paintings, will also include a visit to Tarangire National Park, two nights at the Ngorongoro Crater and a stop at Olduvai Gorge, where Leakey discovered one of the earliest fossils of man, about 1.7 million years old.

“The trips we plan have short- and long-term payoffs,” says Newport Harbor Art Museum curator Bruce Guenther, who recently returned from a four-day junket to Seattle with 20 members of the museum’s Visionaries support group. (After a first year’s dues of $1,000, Visionaries pay $500 annually.) “On the short term, the trips frequently result in donations of money. On the long term, they leave people with a positive feeling; they become dedicated, want to participate in our fund-raising experiences.”

In Seattle, on a trip that cost $1,500 per person, the Visionaries toured museums, dined at some tony restaurants, and viewed the paintings in the homes of private collectors.

Guenther says his newly formed Curator’s Circle, an organization of 200 members that has combined the museum’s Acquisition Council and California Century Club groups, plans to take two trips annually. Come fall, about 20 members will take a four-day trip to St. Louis and New Orleans for about $1,500 each.

“Those cities both have new contemporary art centers,” Guenther says. “And we hope to see some private collections.”

In the fall of ‘93, Guenther plans to take 20 members of the Curator’s Council, who pay annual dues of $500, to South America for two weeks. “We’ll go to the Sao Paulo Biennale, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. It will cost about $3,000.”

Pat Patel, co-chairwoman of the Laguna Art Museum Contemporary Collectors support group (dues are $175 per year) says an excursion to Dallas is in the making. “Last year, we went to Washington and visited several historical collections as well as private ones.

“Our group raises money to help the museum acquire paintings. So, our trips are mostly about looking at the work of artists we are interested in buying or looking at a particular kind of art--conceptual or abstract--to educate our members.”

Not to mention the fact that the getaways provide museum members with a chance to get to know one another socially. “It’s a great way to make friends,” Patel says. “One of the best.”