O.C. ART / CATHY CURTIS : Laguna Museum Dismisses More Than a Director

I was just as amazed to hear it as you probably were. Charles Desmarais, director of the Laguna Art Museum for 5 1/2 years, suddenly dismissed by the executive committee of the museum’s board of trustees?

After turning a sleepy, provincial museum into an institution offering intelligently curated, often venturesome shows of contemporary and historical art? How could this be?

It has been impossible to get a substantive answer from people close to the museum. Board president Teri Kennady has said only that the board wanted “more energy to be put in administration,” and her fellow board members have maintained a uniform silence.

So what gives?

The major cause of board dissatisfaction seems to be the outcome of a decision Desmarais announced in May 1990, nearly two years after he came to the museum. After looking unsuccessfully for a replacement for chief curator Michael McManus, who had resigned in spring of 1989, Desmarais announced that he would take over the job himself.

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At the same time, he created a new position--associate director, filled by former South Coast Repertory development director Bonnie Brittain Hall--specifically to give himself more time for curating, he said. Hall was to assume about one-third of his administrative duties.

So far, so good. There is ample precedent for a director serving as his own chief curator, with or without the title. The most famous example is Sherman Lee, former director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, whose expertise lay in Chinese art. Martin Friedman, former director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, was a renowned curator of contemporary art. Richard Koshalek, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has curated major architecture shows.

“Being a director is not curating,” Desmarais said Friday. “Being a director is managing the entire program. Some curator-directors in the world are both great curators and great directors. They’re people to emulate. But I also think each institution has its own needs.

“I saw this situation as one that required my attention to curatorial matters in a way that (former Newport Harbor Art Museum director) Kevin Consey didn’t have to because . . . the museum was at a different point in its growth.”

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Indeed it was. The Laguna Art Museum’s previous director, William Otton, had not provided strong artistic leadership. Although he presided over a $1.6 million renovation of the museum, which doubled exhibition space, the art shown in that space consisted mostly (despite McManus’ efforts) of routine Southern California plein-air painting and middle-of-the-road Southern California contemporary art.

When Otton accepted the position of president of the Art Institute of Southern California in 1987, the Laguna Art Museum’s board made no bones about looking for someone who would put the institution “on the map” in artistic circles. And it put its money where its mouth was.

Otton, who had never directed a museum before, was making an annual salary of about $40,000 when he left. Desmarais, an acknowledged expert in photography who had been director of the California Museum of Photography at UC Riverside for more than seven years--where he led a $2.6 million capital fund drive--was paid $88,000.

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The investment paid off. In 1990, Desmarais’ impact on the exhibition schedule (normally planned several years ahead) first became visible. His show “Why I Got Into TV and Other Stories: The Art of Ilene Segalove” offered a generous sampler of photography and video by an artist from Los Angeles who brings a sharp focus to the banalities of suburban life.

The following year, Desmarais curated the museum’s first architecture show, “Morphosis: Making Architecture,” a rather baffling and precious affair. But it was accompanied by an excellent lecture series--another major stride the museum made under his guidance, in addition to a quantum leap in the scholarly content of publications.

In 1992 Desmarais hit the jackpot with his critically well received “Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980,” a fresh examination of work by nearly 50 artists who emphasize aspects of gullibility and skepticism inherent in photography.

The show was sponsored by the well-respected Fellows of Contemporary Art and is traveling to other institutions, including the Friends of Photography Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco, the Tampa Museum of Art and the Des Moines Art Center.

Desmarais also organized most of the one-person shows for the South Coast Plaza satellite site in Costa Mesa--most memorably, installations by Paul Kos, Dawn Fryling, Sono Osato and Jean Lowe.

In retrospect, it does seem that this site might have been turned over more often to the curatorial staff, Bolton Colburn, curator of collections, and Susan Anderson, curator of exhibitions. Too often, their shows for the main museum were relegated to out-of-the-way spots, and they received little credit in membership calendars and press materials.

When Anderson did get to work on toothier material--her 1990 “Pursuit of the Marvelous: Stanley William Hayter, Charles Howard and Gordon Onslow Ford”--it suffered the indignity of being temporarily removed to make room for the annual art auction.

Some museum supporters point out that Desmarais seemed content to bask in the popular embrace of “Kustom Kulture,” --the car culture show in 1993 that brought in a record 17,000 visitors--without giving more than token acknowledgment to guest curator Craig Stecyk and co-curator Colburn.

Meanwhile, however, Desmarais went from strength to strength. His first-ever retrospective of seminal California modernist and former Dana Point resident John McLaughlin--scheduled to open in October 1995--has been eagerly anticipated by the art world. As of Friday, Desmarais and the trustees had not discussed the future of that show, for which the museum received a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Although Desmarais credits assistant curator Lisa Buck for her research contributions, the McLaughlin exhibition is firmly identified with his vision, so much so that key lenders might reconsider their participation if he were no longer associated with it.

The best solution, if Desmarais is appointed to either of the directorial positions for which he is in the running in Houston and Miami, might be to transfer the grant to his new institution (a tactic the NEA has permitted in other cases) and have the show travel to the Laguna Art Museum.

Speaking of grants, under Desmarais’ leadership the museum did not appear to be faltering in the fund-raising department. Quite the contrary. (Hall resigned last December. Desmarais said at the time that he reassumed most of her administrative responsibilities.)

Hall’s predecessor, Lynn Kirst, initiated a corporate council made up of donors committed to giving at least $5,000 annually. Major grants during Desmarais’ tenure included a record $1 million from the Harry and Grace Steele Foundation, a $150,000 Special Artist Initiatives Grant from the NEA and a $75,000 award from the Institute of Museum Services, a federal agency.

The Steele gift was part of $1.8 million in gifts and pledges received for the museum’s 75th-anniversary endowment fund drive, a respectable amount in a faltering economic climate. The deficit shrank from $450,000 in 1988 to $118,000 this year. And there were no layoffs or reductions in the operating budget (now $1.7 million)--tactics to which the Newport Harbor Art Museum had to resort during the past couple of years.

Desmarais’ administrative skills also involved an ability to play off one need against another when money was tight, always in service to the museum’s key resources--exhibitions and staff. At least once, the trash pickup bill went unpaid for a short while, and in 1991 the staff took an unpaid three-day furlough. But only one major exhibition (“The Transparent Thread: Asian Philosophy in Recent American Art,” from the Hofstra Museum) was canceled for lack of funding.

It also must be remembered, as the director of another art institution recently remarked to me, that “artistic vision is the rare commodity” in a director. Although business concerns do matter, “a museum’s main job is not to make ends meet.”

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So what, exactly, was the problem? Desmarais said Friday that the board never gave him a written evaluation of his performance, and neither the board nor its executive committee ever formally discussed with him any problems they had with the way he ran the museum.

“I always discussed it with one or two people, a shifting group of people,” he said. “There was no way to know in what form (my remarks) reached the executive committee. That was one of the great unfairnesses.”

In recent weeks, an impasse between Desmarais and the board came to a head. “I told the board I was willing to do whatever they wanted me to do. I said I would spend all my time on administration and fund-raising, if that’s what they wanted. But one thing I heard was that they wanted me to do only curatorial things, and they would get a financial manager.”

Disgruntled by this turn of affairs and the “breakdown in communication” that helped to cause it, Desmarais said he decided to “accommodate (the trustees) until I moved on to something more suited to me.”

But the trustees had the last word when they sent Desmarais’ attorney a letter of termination (with no explanation of the cause) and a severance check for an amount he calls “substantial.”

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Museums are volatile places, rife with clashing styles and egos, and able directors--whether happy or not in their current situations--tend to have their sights set on working at more prestigious institutions. Laguna Beach certainly could not have kept Desmarais forever, even if it wanted to.

But it seems incredible that the board did not work out some arrangement whereby Desmarais would stay on the job, at least for a temporary period, and continue to give the museum the benefit of his expertise. It’s hard to understand why it was worth a hefty severance check to get rid of the man rather than work out some mutually beneficial solution that would be less costly to the museum in these financially difficult times.

And there’s another consideration: The art world is a small place. Before summarily dismissing such a valued member of the art community, the board should have considered what message its action might send to potential candidates for the job. After all, there’s plenty of competition: At least 20 art museums in the U.S. are looking for directors. Why risk alienating the next Charles Desmarais?