Message Is Mixed on O.C.-Arts Palette : ’94 A LOOK AHEAD: Crystal ball, crystal ball, what shall unto us befall?

Skeptical minds want to know: Just how bankable are the cultural plans, predictions and expectations for the new year that’s upon us?

Can we rely on Huntington Beach’s plan to open an art center in May?

How about predictions on how the most prominent newcomer to the local arts scene will make his mark?

What about the dismal expectation of further funding cuts to municipal arts programs?

Herewith is a list, admittedly subjective and not without caveats, calibrated according to the bankability of some of the developments we’re told are the 1994 docket.

* Probable, unless you don’t believe in Santa Claus or that construction projects are ever completed on schedule:

The most tangible, visible change to the local arts landscape would be the opening of the Huntington Beach Art Center, envisioned as a multipurpose facility to show home-team and visiting artists to “include Orange County in the national arts dialogue,” says Naida Osline, Huntington Beach’s cultural services supervisor.

The opening date for the center, which occupies a refurbished building near the community’s main drag, has been postponed several times because of delays in the $1.1-million face lift.

But, Osline said recently, it now “looks like we’ll open around May, and that’s not going to shift much.”

Broadly speaking, what can be expected from the center?

A focus that leans toward “process and experimentation,” rather than finished product, Osline said. “The identity of it will evolve, and that’s part of what will be interesting: how it develops, how new staff people we’ll bring on” will have an impact.

Meanwhile, near Lake Forest--and comparatively less probable, if only because of its vast size--would be the construction of a $20-million, 24-screen AMC Theaters movie complex that, developers promise, will show art and foreign films as well as mainstream fare.

Other local theater owners have reported a hearty demand for such films as “Howards End” and “The Piano,” and Edwards Theaters Circuit Inc. likewise plans to devote screens to foreign and art movies in its new 18-screen center, scheduled to open in 1995 in Irvine.

* Very likely (but who’s going to like it)?

Economic forecasters are predicting that the county’s economy won’t perk up much until 1995, which means more cutbacks can be expected for cities’ already strained arts programs, says Joe Felz, director of the Fullerton Museum Center.

Felz said, however, that possible cuts “might not be as bad or as intense” as in 1993-94. During that period, for example, the Fullerton center’s allocation from the city was $30,000 less than the previous fiscal year. Still, municipally funded arts organizations’ increasing reliance on private-sector support will continue, he said.

Along those lines, the Muckenthaler Cultural Center expects to reach an agreement with Fullerton on whether to ween itself off city funding.

“We should have an answer one way or another by the end of the first quarter,” center chairman Bruce Seldeen said.

* We’re not sure how likely, but it ‘ s certifiably likely people will be watching closely:

Will Tom Tomlinson, entering his first full calendar year as the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s new executive director, make major changes in 1994?

The center’s charter--to present musical theater, opera, ballet and classical music--won’t change, at least until additional theaters are built, says Timothy L. Strader, vice chairman of the center’s executive committee.

But, Strader said, Tomlinson will help book “individual shows” by “popular entertainers (whom) we have not been able to accommodate in the past.”

Strader said the center expects more open dates this year because artists that might have played the center will instead perform at such nearby venues as the Irvine Barclay Theatre and the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Such individual events are “exactly the kind” Tomlinson booked in his former post as president of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Strader said, and “he has the contacts and experience to make that happen here.”

Frank Sinatra and Victor Borge, the piano-playing comedian who turns 85 today, are among the entertainers Strader said he had in mind, but, he asserted, more contemporary performers on the cutting edge of culture will “absolutely” be considered, as the “opportunities present themselves.”

*Not only unlikely, but don’t expect it:

Merger talks between the Orange County Philharmonic Society and Pacific Symphony, shelved earlier last year, will not be resumed in ‘94, both parties say. The idea had been discussed as a way to address the respective groups’ financial woes, which have, however, eased considerably with recent fund raising.

“We have no plans to consider resurrecting” the talks, said Dean Corey, the society’s executive director. “None.”

“We have no reason to” discuss the issue further, agreed Pacific Symphony board president Rondell Hanson, “although we have had very preliminary discussions about the possibility of doing some joint activities in educational outreach.”

* We’ll believe it when we see it. Maybe:

Renewed efforts to come up with some sort of countywide arts council are alleged to take place in 1994, even though, as of late December, no date had been set for a promised meeting this month.

The county’s first such effort, which produced a viable, but ultimately doomed agency, came in the early 1970s; its most recent attempt fizzled a couple of years ago.

“Orange County is not the first community to go through a couple of incarnations of a council before it takes,” Gloria Woodlock, programs officer for the California Arts Council, said recently. But, she added, “I think now it’s about time!”

* Let’s fling reality aside and talk hope:

Some local arts officials are hoping that 1994 will bring an end, finally, to divisive controversies over the arts, personified by the Robert Mapplethorpe brouhaha and lately rehashed when a Newport Beach city councilman slammed the Newport Harbor Art Museum for exhibiting work about AIDS.

Now that Jane Alexander has taken over as head of the National Endowment for the Arts, “hopefully there won’t be so much controversy,” said the Fullerton Museum Center’s Felz.

“It’s certainly good news to have someone in there who is an artist and has an appreciation for the arts and will advocate for them.”

“What I’m hoping,” said Huntington Beach’s Osline, “is that more politicians come out and talk about the value of the arts. We only hear from them when they’re talking about” issues they perceive as negative. “Why not discuss the economic spinoff or the intellectual stimulation of the arts in a community?”