Callers Support Museum Against Official’s Criticism : Art: Newport Councilman John Hedges had objected to an AIDS-related exhibit at the museum, which received a $10,000 grant this year from the city.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum on Wednesday received more than a dozen calls and letters of support after City Councilman John W. Hedges railed against an AIDS-related exhibit at the museum, which received a $10,000 grant from the city this year.

“Self-Portrait,” by Los Angeles artists Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault, is composed of a large plastic bubble supporting tubes filled with flowing red liquid. The bubble also contains four video monitors that show images of different segments of the body, including genitalia.

The exhibit was paid for with corporate and individual donations, but Hedges said at a council study session on Monday that the city should not be giving money to a museum that shows what he called objectionable artwork.

“This is your taxpayer dollars at work,” he said Monday, holding a flyer about the exhibit.

Hedges, who cast the only no vote when the council voted on the museum’s grant in August, said Tuesday that the exhibit was “obscene” and that, even though the exhibit is privately funded, the museum is “taking city money and should be held accountable for how it’s spent.” He added that he would “prevail upon the council not to give” the museum any more grants.

Newport Harbor Art Museum Director Michael Botwinick said the museum had received no calls or letters supporting Hedges. Rather, he said, they expressed outrage at Hedges for “making this an issue and jeopardizing our children’s programs.”

The city’s $10,000 grant to the museum, which shows contemporary art, was earmarked exclusively for educational programs for students in the Newport-Mesa School District.

Botwinick wrote in a letter to council members that the issue “is not about tax money, it’s about what Councilman Hedges thinks you ought to see. Make up your own mind.”

The museum, which has received city grants of about $10,000 for several years, planned today to supply visitors with stationery to write the council to express their opinions about the exhibit.

“This is a great exercise in community interaction,” Botwinick said.

The museum is no stranger to controversy over its artworks. In 1990, it filed a federal lawsuit successfully challenging a requirement by the National Endowment for the Arts that grant recipients sign an anti-obscenity pledge.