Some Sunshine Broke Through Cloudy Arts Sky : 1992 THE YEAR IN REVIEW. O.C. Arts: Most groups struggled, but some prospered.

The grim economy of 1991 turned grimmer in 1992, and had it not been for the surprise arrival of a new arts benefactor at the close of last year, the Orange County arts community would have been a few steps closer to a real-life re-enactment of Dickens’ “Bleak House.” But even with some good news, 1992 fell far short of conjuring up “Great Expectations.”

Corners that were cut in 1991 were cut off in ‘92, as several groups reduced or curtailed activities. The unpaid furloughs of ’91 became the layoffs of ’92. Expansion plans that had been put on hold in ’91 were formally shelved in ‘92, most notably the Newport Harbor Art Museum’s long-languishing plans for a $40-million new building.

Arts organizations struggled harder for fewer dollars from individual and corporate sources as the county’s developer-paced economy continued to sputter. Federal, state and local money for arts also was tougher to come by.

The key bright spot in the year’s economic news was the emergence of the Anaheim-based Leo Freedman Foundation. After doling out $1 million in grants just after Christmas last year, the foundation made good on its pledge to award at least $500,000 to local arts groups every year. Last week, its latest round of grants brought another $100,000 to nine groups. And despite otherwise harsh economic times, there were some pockets of growth.

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana finally reopened after four years and $12-million worth of renovation. Additionally, the theater community gained three new members: Shakespeare Orange County, Vanguard Theatre Ensemble and the Ensemble Theatre company. And pop, rock and jazz fans got a splashy new competitor to the venerable Coach House in San Juan Capistrano with the opening of the Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana. Rock returned to Anaheim Stadium for the first time in five years as U2 ended its mammoth “Zoo TV” tour at the home of the Angels in November.

Still, a lion’s share of media and curiosity-seekers’ attention focused on a pair of new burger joints with Hollywood connections: Planet Hollywood in Santa Ana, Hard Rock Cafe in Newport Beach. They brought little in terms of original entertainment--(Patrick Swayze’s shoes from “Dirty Dancing”??)--but lots in the way of marquee value courtesy of their high-profile proprietors.

To a large degree, local events paralleled national arts news. Causing balletomanes everywhere to grab hold of their tights, American Ballet Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet suffered severe money troubles, while other groups canceled tours or new projects or folded altogether. Stateside, the San Diego Foundation for Performing Arts, a respected presenting organization, closed its doors, and the 80-year-old Sacramento Symphony played its final refrain.

Despite runaway deficits in ‘91, local music groups managed to hold on. Some weren’t so lucky in ’92. Plagued by bad box office, South Coast Symphony folded in June and Irvine Civic Light Opera canceled its fall production at Irvine Barclay Theatre.

Another small-budget orchestra--the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove--reduced its 1992-93 season, and the Orange County Chamber Orchestra and the Mozart Camerata canceled large chunks of theirs.

The slumped economy indirectly claimed one of the county’s busiest community arts facilities, the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, which shut this summer when its lease ran out. The center may reopen if members of its supporters can work out a deal with the center’s cash-strapped owner, the Anaheim City School District, but a school official said last week that the deal, involving a new building for the center, must be closed around mid-January.

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Enduring one of its toughest years to date, the Newport Harbor Art Museum laid off nine staff members, and, at the beginning of the year, indefinitely postponed a $40-million building campaign--long viewed as the next move toward the county’s cultural adulthood.

Museum officials tried to put their best face on the situation, stressing that they had no plans to reduce hours or exhibitions or raise admission prices. But Sue Henger, who edited museum catalogues and brochures for 15 years before receiving her pink slip, sounded an ominous note. “I don’t understand what the future of the museum will be,” Henger said the day she was let go. “It’s sad that it has gone from such a vibrant place to . . . who knows what it’s going to become?”

Muckenthaler Cultural Center officials may have been pondering a similar question when, for the first time in recent memory, they canceled an exhibit to have opened next spring and didn’t schedule a replacement. The center’s foundation raised only half its hoped-for operating budget (funding the center receives from the city of Fullerton has been slashed in recent years, director Judith Peterson said).

Other municipally funded cultural programs felt the squeeze as financially strapped cities throughout the county suffered under the state’s continuing economic woes.

City of Fullerton budget blues were partially to blame for the Fullerton Museum Center’s decision to close its doors on Tuesdays through June and spelled the end of an annual Lively Arts Festival. In Costa Mesa, funding problems resulted in the cancellation of the annual Arts on the Green festival. After slashing its arts grants budget in half, the Costa Mesa City Council postponed a decision to award the grants at all, leaving festival organizers too little time to raise additional funds. The grants issue is still unresolved.

State grants to local arts groups dropped this year as well, down by nearly 25%. The California Arts Council said its efforts to more equitably distribute its largess among small and large groups--not the recession--contributed to the decrease.

Nevertheless, Newport Harbor Art Museum successfully lobbied the CAC for a grant after an advisory panel had recommended no grant at all. In the same vein, the Orange County Philharmonic Society ended up with more than double the amount it had initially been awarded after a successful appeal.

The reopening of Bowers Museum in October was perhaps the year’s most auspicious event. With a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring the release of white pigeons--do white doves cost more?--its doors were flung wide, revealing a renovated institution that had tripled in size.

The Laguna Art Museum announced ambitious programming for its 75th anniversary coming up next year (five major exhibits), and art-world gossip lines were all abuzz, thanks to heiress Joan Irvine Smith. She announced plans to open a museum to house her recently acquired, multimillion-dollar collection of Southern California Impressionist paintings. She is set to open a temporary museum on Jan. 15 in an Irvine office building.

Smaller-scale expansions continued on the coffeehouse scene, where myriad new joints sprouted up with poetry readings, acoustic music and grass-roots art exhibits. The Irvine Fine Arts Center launched its artist-in-residency program at the city’s Marketplace shopping center. In Laguna Beach, one of the city’s longtime annual summer arts-and-crafts marts, Art-A-Fair, put on its first winter installment while the nearby Sawdust Festival staged its second and drew enough dollars to plan a third.

Both Pacific Symphony and the Orange County Philharmonic Society ended their 1991-92 fiscal years with surpluses--both came up short last year--and lopped sizable chunks off their respective accumulated deficits. (The orchestra’s long-term debt was reduced by 20% to $658,000, and the Philharmonic Society’s was cut by more than half, to $110,000.) As a result, merger talks that had reached a fever pitch between the two groups in late 1991 were “put on the back burner,” outgoing society president Edward Halvajian said in July.

On the front burner in Huntington Beach was the city’s aerosol-art program, which succeeded beyond expectations during its first year, officials said. About 600 people applied for permits under the program, which legalizes spray-can painting along a seaside retaining wall. Also moving apace was fund raising for the Huntington Beach Art Center, slated to open in late 1993. A total of $500,000 has been raised ($100,000 of that during ‘92) toward a goal of $750,000 needed to convert an existing building into the community art facility, officials said.

As for other noteworthy events of 1992, more than twice as many groups than ever--nearly 20--took part in A Day Without Art, the fourth annual arts community’s AIDS observance day. But, in a repetition of last year’s news, another year passed without the formation of a countywide arts council despite more urgings from California Arts Council chief Joanne C. Kozberg to create one.

Little in the way of artistic controversy broke out, other than a flap over a painting containing lesbian themes by Letitia Houston, a student at the Orange County High School for the Arts.

At first, OCHSA officials wouldn’t let Houston display the painting, which addressed her lesbianism, in a senior class show. Houston and other students perceived their reaction as censorship. School officials denied any such notion, but, after protests from gay- and lesbian-rights groups, they allowed the painting’s display.

As for major personnel shifts this year, there was last week’s unexpected resignation of GroveShakespeare’s managing director and executive vice president, Barbara G. Hammerman. She plans to leave--for personal and professional reasons--at the end of the year. Earlier, the company appointed W. Stuart McDowell as its new artistic director.

Elsewhere, the Orange County Symphony of Garden Grove fired general manager Yaakov Dvir-Djerassi, who had helped found the orchestra.

The arts community suffered a different sort of loss in June with the death of choreographer Gloria Newman, who founded the county’s oldest modern-dance company in 1961 and touched the lives of many. Gladys Kares, who danced in Newman’s company for 16 years, spoke after her death of Newman’s penchant for revising her own works and her belief in constant renewal.

“She believed that dances should change, as people change, as times change,” Kares said.