Muckenthaler’s at a Loss : Art: The Fullerton museum is forced to cancel a 1993 exhibition--and won’t replace it--because of serious money troubles.

Serious financial woes have forced the Muckenthaler Cultural Center to cancel an exhibition slated for 1993, leaving its galleries dark during its regular season.

An exhibit featuring DNA Funart Vactorie, a European avant-garde visual and performance-art group, was scheduled to open in late April and run through early July. But the center couldn’t come up with about $11,000 to pay for the show and will not schedule a replacement, director Judith Peterson said Friday. Peterson said this was the first time in her eight-year tenure that the center would be without an exhibit during the regular season.

City funding for the center has been slashed by about 25% in recent years, Peterson said, to about $280,000 this year.On top of that, the center’s nonprofit Muckenthaler Cultural Center Foundation raised only half its projected budget of $60,000 this year through memberships and donations, she said.

Memberships are down because “the economy is down.” Foundation officials failed to meet their donation goal because they have focused instead on a long-term budget plan that would establish an endowment, Peterson said.

“It’s just been a combination of the city being really hard hit and that trickling down to the foundation,” she said. “In the past, the city was able to help the foundation when it couldn’t raise money, but that’s not possible now.”

Peterson said she expects further cuts in city funding next year. The city of Fullerton has begun to draft its 1993-94 budget, and center and city officials have been meeting to discuss a possible center budget, she said. City of Fullerton budget cuts also were a factor in a decision last April by Fullerton Museum Center officials to close its doors one day a week.

No other programming cancellations are planned, and no staffing or operational cuts are envisioned, Peterson said. The center may hold some lectures or fund-raising events during the months that the gallery will be closed, she said. The cancellation had nothing to do with the content of the exhibit, she added.

Recent money troubles delayed reopening of the center’s outdoor summer theater, she said. Center officials wanted to stage some sort of production there in September when the theater’s renovation was completed, but “we really didn’t have the funds,” she said. Negotiations with a theatrical producer are underway for shows next summer, Peterson added.

* SHUTTING DOWN: Santa Monica isn’t losing just another gallery--but James Corcoran’s. F11