Art Museum Receives Gift of $1 Million : Endowment: The Laguna Beach facility kicks off its 75th anniversary fund-raising campaign with the largest grant in its history, courtesy of the Steele Foundation.

Laguna Art Museum has received $1 million from the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation, the largest grant in its history and the cornerstone of a 75th anniversary campaign launched Tuesday to increase its endowment.

“Our current endowment provides about 5% of our annual operating budget, which is not a lot,” museum trustee and campaign chairwoman Claudette Shaw said. “It’s not been easy to balance the budget in the last few years, and we’ve only been able to do it because of painful cost-cutting measures” that have included staff furloughs and cancellation of a traveling exhibit.

The museum, founded in 1918, hopes to raise $2 million by the end of 1993.

Including the Steele Foundation gift--a one-to-one matching grant--the museum has raised $1.4 million toward that goal. That amount also includes $100,000 each from the Fieldstone and Segerstrom family foundations and donations from other local individuals and companies, given before the drive was publicly announced. Both will be used to meet the match.

The campaign, if successful, will more than double the museum’s endowment fund, which stands at $1.3 million. It was established in the late 1970s under then-board president Barbara Steele Williams, daughter of Harry and Grace Steele and a Steele Foundation trustee.

Interest from the new fund will be used to pay for exhibitions and educational programs and building improvements and to establish a cash reserve, which the museum has never had, officials said.

The Newport Beach-based Harry and Grace Steele Foundation, a private, family foundation established in 1953, has given several million dollars to Orange County arts organizations over the years. It has awarded grants totaling roughly $6 million to the Orange County Performing Arts Center and $1.1 million to Newport Harbor Art Museum. Its largess to the Laguna Art Museum previously totaled $700,000, a foundation spokeswoman said.

The museum’s operating budget for fiscal year 1992-93 is $1.4 million. It ended last year in the black, with a $51 surplus on a $1.5-million budget.