Naomi Vine Tops List for Laguna Museum : Art: The board may vote on appointment Tuesday. She is a business-wise administrator with a Ph.D. in art history.

LAGUNA BEACH — A business-savvy administrator from New York City with a Ph.D. in art history is the leading candidate to be the next director of the Laguna Art Museum.

Sources report that the museum’s executive committee on Thursday authorized contract negotiations with Naomi Vine for the position, which has been vacant for 10 months. If agreement is reached, the full museum board will vote on her appointment Tuesday. Vine is the only candidate--chosen from about a dozen serious contenders--to have reached the contract stage.

Vine, 45, has never been a museum director but has held key positions in various arts organizations for at least 15 years. Currently she is interim executive director of the eight-member Parsons Dance Company in New York.

A museum source would not discuss salary or other contractual provisions. (Former director Charles Desmarais was paid $88,000.) If the negotiations fail or the board does not ratify Vine’s appointment, the source said, a search committee will continue to work independently and will present new choices to the board next month.

The Laguna Art Museum is one of Orange County’s oldest and best-known cultural organizations, serving about 200,000 visitors annually in two sites with a focus on historical and contemporary California art and an annual budget last reported at $1.4 million. Overshadowed in recent years by the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Newport Beach, the 77-year-old museum acquired increased prestige under Desmarais, director from 1988 until March.

But Desmarais was dismissed by the board. No reason was given, but some board members later said he paid too much attention to organizing exhibitions and not enough to administrative duties.

A source at the museum said Thursday that the likelihood of increased federal cutbacks in arts funding and the current climate of belt-tightening among private donors requires a new model of a director: someone who combines a traditional art background with a master’s degree in business and a solid understanding of fund-raising.

Vine, who grew up in Seattle, holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Chicago and an M.B.A. from Emory University in Atlanta. Before joining the Parsons Dance Company, she was chief development officer at the American Craft Museum and a senior staff member at C.W. Shaver and Co., management and fund-raising consultants for nonprofit organizations, also in New York.

Company president Carl Shaver speaks highly of Vine. “We do a lot of financial analysis and forecasting. She had very good financial skills,” he said Thursday. “She is extremely bright and a hard worker. I’d be in the office at 6 or 7 p.m. and she’d (still) be there doing her job. . . . She gets things done in a pleasant and effective way.”