LACMA Cuts 3 Staffers in Shortfall : Art: Michael Quick, senior curator of American art, has also resigned as the county museum attempts to trim $2 million from its budget.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has laid off three employees in a move to cope with a countywide fiscal crisis. Additionally, Michael Quick, senior curator of American art, has resigned, reportedly in an effort to avoid being laid off. The museum on Thursday morning notified the employees of their termination, effective immediately. Their museum declined to reveal their names. Sources close to the museum said that Quick was the only member of the 29-person curatorial staff on the final termination list.

Quick, who began his career as a curator at the Dayton Institute of Arts, joined LACMA’s staff in 1976. He has organized major traveling exhibitions of paintings by American artists George Bellows and George Inness during his 17-year tenure in Los Angeles.

The layoffs are part of LACMA’s four-month effort to comply with the County Board of Supervisors’ order to trim $2 million from the museum’s $18-million county budget. The Wilshire Boulevard museum generally derives about half of its budget from the county and raises the rest from private sources. As a result of county cutbacks, LACMA’s operating budget for 1992-93 has been reduced to $29 million--down from an all-time high of $31 million in 1991-92.

By early this week, the museum had made about $1.5 million in cuts by freezing vacant positions, facilitating employee transfers, promoting an early retirement program and slashing services and operational costs, according to Pam Jenkinson, the museum’s public information officer. Struggling to meet the county’s demands, the museum has closed some galleries on alternate weekdays, reduced maintenance and trimmed expenditures on such basic items as electricity and telephones, she said.

Friday was the deadline for county employees to apply for the early retirement program, but the Supervisors on Tuesday directed the museum to proceed with layoffs, Jenkinson said.

Michael Shapiro, who recently succeeded Earl A. Powell III as director of LACMA, called a meeting of the entire museum staff on Thursday afternoon and told them of the layoffs. Shapiro likened the staff to a family that had been injured and is entering a period of healing, sources said. “Morale has never been lower here,” one curator said.

Psychologist Kevin Flynn, former director of the County Employees Assistance Foundation, has been hired by the museum to counsel laid-off employees, Jenkinson said.

Many museum employees privately say that they have been operating with a siege mentality since last fall, when the depths of the county’s fiscal problems became apparent. But now museum officials are trying to put a positive spin on a demoralizing situation.

“Initially we thought we would lose 35 county employees, but we brought that number down with tremendous effort,” Jenkinson said. “As painful as it is, the number is much smaller than we had feared.”

The layoffs include a full range of the museum’s county employees, in terms of job descriptions, salaries and longevity, Jenkinson said. Romales Taylor, assistant director for facilities, and unidentified painters and carpenters were among those who were terminated, according to sources.

The rationale for layoffs was to meet the budgetary goal with the least possible impact on the museum’s program, Jenkinson said. Rumors had circulated that the top level of curators would be skimmed to save money, but Jenkinson said no particular group was targeted for layoffs.

The museum has a total of 373 employees, of which 167 are paid by the county and the reminder through private funds. During the last few months, LACMA’s county-paid staff has been pared down by 23 employees, including eight vacant positions that have been frozen, eight transfers to other county departments, three employees who accepted the county’s early retirement program, the three layoffs and Quick’s resignation. That number may increase if additional employees applied for early retirement before the Friday deadline and if their applications are accepted.

The museum’s exhibition program also has suffered, although it is funded by private sources. Among exhibitions that have been canceled are a retrospective of R. B. Kitaj’s paintings and “Max Weber: The Cubist Decade, 1910-1920.”