Neon Art Takes the Downtown Exit : Art: The move to a new site at Universal City’s CityWalk will increase the museum’s exposure.

The Los Angeles riots and the closure of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Temporary Contemporary were the “last nails in the coffin” for the downtown Museum of Neon Art, according to the museum’s board president, who announced last week that the 10-year-old showcase of electric and kinetic fine artworks will close its doors in late summer or early fall, prior to opening a store with museum goods in Universal City.

“Museum traffic had been in decline for the last 18 months, but since the civil disturbances here, it’s gone to virtually nil,” said Danny Justman, president of MONA’s board of trustees. Justman noted that while the museum used to draw between 100 and 150 people a day, even weekend traffic is now down to 10 to 15.

The closure of the nearby Temporary Contemporary also contributed, Justman said, by “cutting off another avenue” of bringing an elusive art crowd to downtown’s industrial area. (The MOCA facility has temporarily closed for an adjacent construction project.)

“There were a lot of events coming together that weren’t very positive, and it’s been demoralizing,” he said, noting that the museum relies almost entirely on attendance receipts (admission is $2.50 per person) and donations from its 1,000 members for its $150,000 annual operating budget.

But, despite having to close the donated 5,000-square-foot Traction Avenue facility that has been the institution’s home since its founding in 1981, Justman predicted a rosy future for the museum.

He said the MONA board is “really ecstatic” about a deal it is working out with the MCA Development Co. for prominent inclusion in the planned Universal City complex CityWalk, a four-block strand of shops, restaurants, theaters and offices scheduled to open in November.

About 38 of the museum’s prized collection of 50 vintage neon signs--most of which have been kept in storage because the museum had no outdoor venue in which to display them--will be prominently featured along the CityWalk. In exchange for the use of the signs, the complex will give the museum an 825-square-foot retail space for a museum store, a small portion of which will be used for mini-contemporary neon art exhibitions, Justman said.

In addition, the small museum--which relies mostly on volunteer help and has only two paid staff members--will work with MCA merchandising specialists to develop a plan for the museum store to eventually fund a new museum site in either the Westside or the Miracle Mile area near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“With the 10-million-plus visitors MCA is expecting (to visit CityWalk annually), we think it will be a successful way to raise quite a bit of money,” said Justman, who predicted the museum would have enough profit in hand to begin looking at spaces within six months of the store’s opening. “They’re going to deliver us quite a few bodies, and we’ll have a much higher profile and a real museum presence. We plan to use that as a jumping off point to introduce ourselves to people who might not have known about the museum otherwise.”

Justman said that while MONA might seek donations from visitors to its shop, it will not embark on a major capital campaign for a new museum site but will instead look to rent a 10,000- to 12,000-square-foot home. And the museum has enough volunteers in the wings, he said, to quickly transform even a raw industrial space into a “full-blown exhibition space.”

“It’s not like we’re closing forever--we’re just leaving downtown,” said MONA Assistant Curator Sonja Yanoviak, who has worked at MONA for five years and watched the sharp decline in attendance. “There’s no question that we’ll open another museum. It’s sad, because downtown has lost so much in the past two years with the Woman’s Building and the (Los Angeles Theatre Center), but we just can’t stay here if we can’t get business downtown.”

According to Justman, no decision has been made yet on MONA’s exact closure date. The current exhibition, “Active Evidence: Kinetic Sculpture by Jim Jenkins,” scheduled to run through Aug. 30, may be the museum’s last. But the board is also considering a farewell exhibition, capped by a benefit fund-raising sale.

Concurrently, the museum staff is curating “Age of Light,” an exhibition of 11 neon artists including Candice Gawne, Michael Flechtner and Lili Lakich, for the Creative Arts Center in Burbank. That show will be on view at the Burbank facility July 31 through Aug. 28.