ART : Paying Homage to the Spirit of Giving : Recession has hurt Southland museums’ acquisitive ambitions, but year-end giving from patrons seeking deductions helps.

Local art museums have been crying the recessionary blues for the past few years, but their tune is considerably more cheerful with the arrival of year-end gifts of artworks from tax-savvy donors.

Consider the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the proud recipient of African art collectors Lee Bronson and Bob Bronson’s donation of 19 masks and figural sculptures, mostly from Zaire.

The Bronson brothers, former owners of a Los Angeles sportswear company who amassed most of their African art holdings in the 1970s, plan to give an additional 19 pieces to the museum after the first of the year, says LACMA curator Nancy Thomas. The museum will inaugurate a semi-permanent installation of the 38 pieces in late March.

The gift is “a giant step forward” in the field of African art, says William A. Mingst, president of the museum’s board of trustees. “We are gaining part of an important collection that has been nationally recognized and toured the country about 15 years ago. For us to have done this by purchasing the material would have been very difficult.”

Other LACMA collections also have grown fatter during the holidays. About 100 vintage Hollywood photographic portraits, more than half of them rare examples, came from Los Angeles collector Lou d’Elia. “Four Lines Oblique Gyratory--Square,” a 20-foot-by-11-foot stainless steel sculpture made in 1973 by George Rickey, is a gift of Marion Smooke; the kinetic piece, activated by air currents, will be installed outdoors on the museum’s plaza.

LACMA trustee Julian Ganz and his wife, Jo Ann, presented the Far Eastern art department with a 13th-Century Chinese stoneware vase in the shape of a plum blossom. In the second installment of a gift to be apportioned over several years, the Ganzes also donated 10% of American artist Fitz Hugh Lane’s painting “Boston Harbor, Sunset,” bringing the museum’s ownership of the work to 20%.

A “Crowned Buddha” sculpture, presented by Michael Phillips and Juliana Maio, adds an important 12th- to 13th-Century work from Thailand to the museum. Meanwhile, the costumes and textiles department has gained a painting of a Turkish sultana in a Parisian revue by the French designer known as Erte.

Christmas came early at the Museum of Contemporary Art, with a late October gift of 70 works by Los Angeles artists from Italian collector Giuseppe Panza di Biumo.

Chief curator Paul Schimmel reports that the museum is also celebrating the largess of other patrons, including Edward Ruscha’s 1988 painting “Picture H House,” from Philip and Beatrice Gersh; works by Saint Clair Cemin, David Diao and Nancy Shaver, from Jake and Ruth Bloom; a Rachel Lachowicz sculpture, from the Norton Family Foundation; a Jason Rhoades sculpture, from Los Angeles City Councilman and MOCA trustee Joel Wachs, and an Andrea Zittel piece, from Jay and Donatella Chiat.

In addition, the museum’s collectors committee raised funds to buy “MIRAGE No. 1,” a 1967 work composed of a series of mirrors by the late Robert Smithson, who is known for his earthworks.

Also counting its blessings, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has welcomed a bequest of 18 19th-Century American paintings from Charles C. and Alma Ralphs Shoemaker, to be unveiled in April along with a bequest of American decorative arts from Margaret Barbour. Photography collectors Michael G. and Jane Wilson have renewed their support of the museum with a gift of seven large works by Francis Frith and several pictorialist and early 20th-Century images.

In San Marino, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens defied the economy in 1994 by packing in crowds for a special exhibition on Abraham Lincoln and gaining several large collections of art and books. In addition to Times cartoonist Paul Conrad’s gift of his drawings and papers, announced last January, 150,000 architectural photographs by Maynard Parker came from the artist’s family, and 300 woodblock prints by American artist Edgar Dorsey Taylor arrived as a gift of Edith Liu. Huntington overseer Russel Kully has donated 103 etchings by British artists, the first of a planned two-part gift of 300 etchings. The Huntington is also the proud new owner of the Alson Clark collection of about 300 architectural books.

The Long Beach Museum of Art’s big acquisitions news is the formation of a collectors circle, Director Harold B. Nelson says. The new group has provided funds to buy eight videotapes by such artists as Erika Suderburg, Bill Viola, Gary Hill and Mona Hatoum; “The Sharecropper,” a 1945 print by Elizabeth Catlett; Margaret Honda’s 1993 sculpture “Twin Gifts”; Masami Teraoka’s 1984 watercolor “Hollywood Storm Series: Losing Contact Over Silver Lake” and Darren Waterston’s 1993 painting “Lepidoptera.”

Major gifts from other donors include Helen Lundeberg’s 1961 painting “Still Life With Folded Paper,” from a fund administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, and Oskar Fischinger’s painting “Crystals” (circa 1960), donated by the artist’s widow, Elfriede Fischinger.

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, which maintains a global collection, has expanded its holdings in several areas thanks to gifts. They encompass a large group of Native American baskets including works by Apache, Hopi, Panamint, Pomo, Pima and Hupa Indians; ceramic art by Pueblo Indian masters Maria Martinez and Lucy Lewis; a 19th-Century feathered costume from Bolivia; a rare collection of M’buti Pygmy ethnographic material, and works from Africa and New Guinea.

The Pacific Asia Museum’s year-end bonanza is dominated by 80 antique Chinese carved objects donated by Barry and Louise Taper. Selected examples in jadeite, nephrite, ivory, bamboo and soapstone are on view at the museum in Pasadena.

Asian art is also the gift of the moment at the San Diego Museum of Art, which has received a rare collection of Chinese calligraphy featuring writings by Chinese rulers and other prominent figures.

Even the richly endowed J. Paul Getty Museum--far better known as an acquisitor than a grateful recipient--has been given artworks during the past year.

A School of Rouen manuscript leaf, circa 1500, came from the Heinz Kisters collection of Switzerland. Four terra-cotta vessels made in Cyprus in the 6th and 5th centuries BC were donated by Ernest P. Mauk Jr.

Donated photographs include 11 gelatin silver prints by Jean-Eugene-Auguste Atget, from photographer Frederick Sommer; Anne Brigman’s “The Heart of the Storm,” from Michael G. and Jane Wilson; 10 massive prints and an album of 73 plates by Carleton Watkins, from Getty photography curator Weston Naef, and “Revenge of the Goldfish,” a 1981 image by Sandy Skoglund, from John Torreano.

Art gifts to museums plummeted with the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which limited most high-income donors to deductions of the artworks’ purchase price instead of the appreciated value. The deduction was reinstated in 1993, and art gifts began rolling in again. But Southern California’s ailing economy has challenged museums on so many fronts--attendance, membership, programs and facilities--that building art collections is not necessarily the highest priority.

“This has not been a blockbuster year for gifts of art,” Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, says of his institution. Although the museum is delighted with donations of works by such artists as Therese Oulton, Sarah Charlesworth, Sarah Seager, Wayne Thiebaud and Martin Kippenberger, Davies says, most of the staff’s and trustees’ energy has gone into a capital campaign and expansion of facilities.

The museum’s success in raising funds for growth and development probably obscures other weaknesses, he says. And, like most of his Southern California colleagues, he sees lean years ahead: “My sense is that we have not turned the corner. I think we have several rough seasons ahead.”

At the Long Beach Museum of Art, financial support from individuals and foundations is up, largely a result of community-oriented programs, says Deborah Bronow, director of development.

“Given this state, this city and this economy, that’s a pleasant surprise,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s still really a struggle.”