O.C. ART / CATHY CURTIS : A Time to Tolerate the Intolerant?

Welcome to Orange County, where an off-the-wall public official dangles a red herring in front of the Newport Beach City Council and a contemporary art museum director tries to turn the man’s ravings into a marketing ploy.

Last week’s melodrama began, as you recall, with Councilman John W. Hedges’ scattershot denunciation of an installation at the Newport Harbor Art Museum by Los Angeles artists Lilla LoCurto and her husband William Outcault as “kind of disgusting,” “obscene” and “ridiculous.”

Speaking at a council study session last Monday, Hedges said the city shouldn’t give money to a museum that shows such work. It just so happens that Hedges was the only council member to have opposed the city’s annual grant to the museum--$10,000 this year, a subsidy that funds only educational programs, not exhibitions.

“Self-Portrait” (which was paid for by a gift from Cliff and Mandy Einstein of Los Angeles) consists of four video monitors and a large plastic bubble supporting a network of plastic tubing filled with red liquid.

When you sit across from the piece in a specially equipped chair, your head is projected on the top monitor. The fluid in the tubes begins to pump at a rate consistent with your heartbeat, which also is amplified in the gallery. Mix-and-match images of the clothed and unclothed body parts of numerous men and women flit in and out of view on the other monitors.

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Inspired by the AIDS virus infection of a close friend, the artists sought to involve viewers in a direct, physical way and to help create empathy with the widespread, age- and gender-blind devastation of the disease. The bubble conjures the illusion of germ-free protection (as in “the boy in the bubble”) while also suggesting the fallacy of believing your own sex practices can or should insulate you from concern about the AIDS crisis.

“Self-Portrait” is too didactic to be comparable to the best works born of the AIDS crisis, yet it allows a simple, easily grasped metaphor to become part of a public-service dialogue with viewers.

I have no idea what type of art, if any, Hedges does like. He seems not to be familiar with the fact that significant contemporary art is about living in this historical moment, which is filled with pain, crisis and disorder.

But his denunciation really isn’t about art; it’s about social intolerance. (“I think AIDS in general is caused by deviant behavior,” Hedges said at the height of the controversy.) How many residents of Orange County privately or publicly agree with Hedges? I shudder to think. But there will always be bigots among us. The question is: When do we dignify their ravings with a serious response, and when do we shine them on?

It is understandable that Newport Harbor Director Michael Botwinick felt the need to respond to Hedges’ blather, as he did in a letter published Wednesday in the Daily Pilot. Botwinick took pains to correct the record as to what the city’s contribution to the museum actually is used for, and to reiterate the museum’s support of and belief in “Self-Portrait.”

But that’s as far as any museum-instigated action should have gone.

By installing a direct line from the gallery to the Pilot’s public feedback number, and supplying stamps and stationery for the public to write to Hedges, Botwinick crossed the line between appropriate behavior for a museum director and P.T. Barnum-style grandstanding. (Forget Barnum; Botwinick’s mentor was former Metropolitan Museum of Art director Thomas Hoving, famous for egomaniacal showman’s tactics.)

Botwinick was quoted in The Times last week as saying that the uproar was “a great exercise in community interaction.” It might have been, if the impetus were a valid statement of disapproval by a sizable or influential portion of the community. But that was not the case. A single person raised his voice in a private City Council session and blurted out his twisted opinions. No votes were taken. No actions were, or are, contemplated.

There are gains and losses when a museum tries to make hay out of this kind of controversy. But the gains are short-term and illusory, and the losses are cumulative and serious. Granted, a few people who never heard of the museum, or never visited it, may have become motivated to see the show for themselves. But how likely is it that a looky-loo, coming to check out the “dirt,” somehow will embrace contemporary art or even be motivated to return for another show? How many people who flocked to the Swedish film “I Am Curious (Yellow)” years ago simply because of its rumored sex scenes became serious devotees of foreign cinema?

On the other hand, allowing a work of art to become the handmaiden of a publicity stunt demeans both the art and the museum. Remember how works from the collection were used as props in the Chanel Boutique windows at the South Coast Plaza mall earlier this year? Remember how collection pieces were used to “sell” the Black and White Ball last year? Well, this is the same cart-before-the-horse approach, but on a larger and more grievous scale.

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Under the guise of giving a positive spin to a negative situation, Botwinick is allowing one man’s impotent agenda to dictate the way the museum presents itself to the public. By surrounding “Self-Portrait” with a flurry of public relations activities never envisioned by the artists, the museum is allowing face-saving self-promotion to overshadow its primary responsibility to art and artists.

Botwinick’s miscalculations in this instance are of a piece with the museum’s change of direction during the nearly three years he has been director.

In the late 20th Century, contemporary art museums at their best are refuges for wildly inventive and sometimes arcane or disturbingly trangressive activities. Such works never were intended to appeal to the “average” or traditional-minded person. That’s why such museums flourish in large urban centers, where diverse points of view are amply represented.

Situated in a wealthy Republican city in a conservative-minded county, Newport Harbor has had an uphill battle throughout its 31-year history to justify itself to local residents. During its heyday, under director Kevin Consey, the museum could point to acclaim from the national art press and exhibitions that traveled to major national art museums.

Even if some local people were scratching their heads or rolling their eyes over the works of art the museum showed, others took pride that a local institution was building a national profile. Meanwhile, a core group of museum supporters who may not have loved or fully understood every show were delighted by the energy and dedication of the staff and united by a belief in the value of modern and contemporary art.

Under the Botwinick regime, the museum has been marketing itself more aggressively to Orange County viewers while virtually removing itself from competition with major art institutions on the national scene. If the events of the past week have any value at all, it is to demonstrate the absurdity of attempting to run a contemporary art museum with such a narrow focus.

An art museum that looks no further for validation than its own suburban community is destined to get tangled up in undignified debates with local fruitcakes. An art museum that concentrates on being a national leader in its field has better things to do.