UCLA Merger With Hammer Museum OKd : Arts: The university will take control of operations, programs and financial affairs. The school’s Wight Gallery and Grunwald Center will move into the cultural center.

Ending nearly two years of negotiations, UCLA on Thursday announced final approval of a plan to take over the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, which had opened to great fanfare in late 1990, 15 days before the death of the longtime Occidental Petroleum chairman. The agreement puts UCLA’s art department in charge of the museum’s operations, programs and financial affairs.

Under terms of the merger, the university will manage the museum without committing new funds. Operating costs will come from the museum’s $2.5-million bond portfolio, $1 million in existing budgets for UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery and Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts--both of which will move into the museum--and additional funds from memberships, admissions, bookstore sales and private donations.

The merger appears to be mutually beneficial, giving the museum professional guidance and prestige while providing UCLA with a high-visibility public forum. About 80% of Hammer’s collection will be on view at the museum 80% of the time, according to Henry Hopkins, director of the Wight Art Gallery, who will direct the new UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center while continuing as chair of UCLA’s art department. A nine-member board of directors will include three representatives each from UCLA and Occidental, one from the Armand Hammer Foundation and two from the community at large.

The agreement marks a major shift in the direction of the museum, which has been mired in controversy since its conception. Hammer, an internationally renowned art collector, set off a furor in 1988 when he broke a 17-year promise to donate his collections to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and announced plans to build his own museum adjacent to Occidental’s offices in Westwood. The company’s financing of the $90-million building was the subject of shareholder lawsuits that were settled shortly before Hammer’s death at age 92.

The marble-clad museum was launched with an ambitious traveling show of the work of Kazimir Malevich, but floundered after Hammer’s demise. UCLA in 1992 announced preliminary plans to manage the museum, but negotiations dragged on much longer than estimated. Hopkins attributed the delay to bureaucratic complications.

UCLA/Hammer will function more as a community cultural center than a traditional museum, Hopkins said. “We hope to break down town-and-gown barriers, and get art out into the community while presenting a good, solid exhibition program, as well as a full calendar of performing arts events, lectures, poetry readings and film festivals,” he said.

The museum also released an advance exhibition program covering a wide swath of art history and drawing on distinguished collections around the world. The first show, opening on June 7, will be “Selections From the Eli Broad Family Foundation Collection.” Subsequent exhibitions include Renaissance prints from the French National Library in Paris, photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum, a retrospective of Surrealist Rene Magritte’s works, Surrealism in California art and a reappraisal of Judy Chicago’s feminist collaboration, “The Dinner Party.”