Santa Ana’s Bowers Reopens Its Doors : Art: A $12-million renovation doubled the museum’s exhibition space and tripled its size.

As costumed dancers swirled exuberantly to ancient rhythms and first-time visitors traipsed through roomy new galleries, the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art came back to life Sunday, after a four-year, $12-million face lift.

“This museum we celebrate today is really a credit to Orange County and to the state of California,” said Secretary of State March Fong Eu, presenting a state proclamation as opening day festivities began with a rousing processional of dancers and singers representing many of the indigenous cultures the museum seeks to celebrate.

Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) also arrived with proclamations. And from Washington, Anne-Imelda Radice, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, sent congratulations by fax machine.

“On behalf of President Bush . . . my best wishes (for) continued success,” wrote Radice, describing the revamped repository as “a dynamic and preeminent institution.”

The festivities were punctuated by about 30 demonstrators who were protesting the legacy of Christopher Columbus, whose bust was donated recently to the museum, officials said. Members of a group called the Orange County Chicano Moratorium Committee marched briefly outside the museum along Main Street, carrying placards with such slogans in Spanish as “Columbus didn’t discover America, he invaded it.”

No one was arrested and the 30-minute demonstration was “very orderly,” museum spokesman Brian E. Langston said.

As early as 8 a.m., the curious were lining up around the block to see the reincarnated Bowers, whose expansion and renovation, paid for by the city of Santa Ana, doubled its exhibition space and tripled its size.

Newport Beach architect George Bissell’s design includes four new state-of-the-art galleries for temporary shows and redesigned or new displays for the institution’s vast, 85,000-piece permanent collection, which focuses on pre-Columbian, American Indian, African and Oceanian objects.

The redesign also added a new museum store and 130 more parking spaces, although it preserved the museum’s landmark mission-style courtyard and bell-tower entrance. It also includes a trendy Southwestern-style restaurant slated to open Dec. 1.

By 4:30 p.m. Sunday, about 7,500 people had arrived for a free open house, Langston said.

The inaugural celebration seemed to symbolize cultural diversity, at least according to Paul Apodaca, the Bowers’ curator of American Indian and folk art.

“It’s a great celebration of the diversity of people,” said Apodaca, who helped introduce nearly continuous outdoor performances by American Indian, Aztec, Tahitian, East Indian, Chinese, African and other singers and dancers clad in brilliantly colored traditional garb. Visitors by and large said Sunday that the renovation was well worth the wait.

“This will be a magnet for people who want to see (various) cultures of the world,” said Rita Corpin, a world history teacher at La Quinta High School in Westminster who remembers family trips to the Bowers as a child.

“I don’t think you’re going to find a better museum (of this sort) in the state of California,” she added, viewing centuries-old Colombian gold jewelry displayed in a temporary exhibition on loan from the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia.

Dang Ngo, a Fountain Valley high school student from Vietnam, praised a carved ivory “mountainscape” from China he found in a gallery honoring Asian contributions to Southern California.

“I read stories about (the Buddhist folk tale the object depicts) when I was in Vietnam, and it’s interesting to see the real thing,” he said.

Resting in a room devoted to Orange County history, Trish Folsom, a piano instructor who lives in Lemon Heights, said she got a kick out of one particular photograph projected on a wall.

“It was neat to see a slide of where we live (as it looked) 80 years ago. It was all orange orchards,” she said.

Hector Ramos, a 30-year resident of Santa Ana, had only one regret as he strolled past a two-faced Nigerian mask with his wife and four daughters.

“There’s not enough time to see it all,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Sunday’s unveiling was long in coming.

The museum grew out of Charles W. and Ada Bowers’ fascination for the Spanish and Mexican eras in Orange County history. The couple, originally from Missouri, willed their Santa Ana home and property to the city in 1924 for a museum focused strictly on local history.

In 1932, their home was demolished and a museum was built. The couple didn’t leave an endowment, however, so the facility didn’t open until four years later, when city officials finally allocated an operating budget for the institution.

Financial and city-related woes over the years have hampered plans for its long hoped-for expansion. Several changes in top management and a switch of architects during the past decade didn’t help. (Trustees jettisoned an ambitious design by the renowned Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer firm because they felt it would overwhelm the old building, destroy its character and cost too much in upkeep.)

After the city formed a private, nonprofit group--the Charles W. Bowers Museum Corp.--to run the institution and address some major fund-raising problems, the museum finally closed for renovation in January, 1989. The city, which will gradually withdraw its funding until the museum is self-supporting by 2007, approved the hiring of Bissell Architects about six months later. Ground was broken for the project a full year later.

Plans call for the Bowers to become the keystone of a 90-acre Bowers Museum District, a major cultural and commercial development bordered by Main and 17th streets and the Santa Ana Freeway.

The cultural district plan was conceived in 1986 by the Bowers’ board of governors, whose goal is to see North Main Street blossom with more museums, hotels, shops, housing and other developments during the next 15 years. At present, the only firm proposal is for a $37.5-million hands-on Discovery Science Center to be funded by the city and with private contributions.

Last month, some local American Indians expressed their distaste when the museum accepted $250,000 and a bronze bust of Christopher Columbus from the Orange County Italian Renaissance Foundation. Controversy over Columbus, in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of his voyage, has erupted across the nation as opinions clash over whether he was a visionary hero or a murderous invader.

The bust was permanently installed at the museum on Oct. 8, and the museum allowed the foundation to name its hall of Spanish exploration and three galleries.

The museum’s executive director, Peter C. Keller, said Sunday that the museum has received no requests for the bust’s removal but that he plans to hold a symposium to discuss Columbus.