Orange County Calendar : Severin Wunderman to Remain Open Through Friday : Art: Public response delays the closing till the end of the week, but the Irvine museum still plans to move its Cocteau collection elsewhere.

Deluged by anxious callers after reports that the Severin Wunderman Museum would close today , pending the transfer of its holdings to another institution, museum officials have decided to keep the galleries open through Friday, according to publicist Mary Crost.

(Today was the original closing date of the current exhibition, “Vaslav Nijinsky: Art of the World’s Greatest Dancer,” on loan from the Nijinsky Foundation in Phoenix.)

The museum--which claims to house the world’s largest collection of the work of French playwright, librettist, film director and painter Jean Cocteau--plans to transfer its multimillion-dollar, 2,000-piece collection to one of two institutions selected by the board of trustees. Museum officials would not name the institutions.

Founded in 1985, the museum occupies two second-floor rooms at the Severin Group, manufacturers and distributors of Gucci watches. Belgian-born company president Severin Wunderman’s passion for Cocteau led him to collect artwork, manuscripts, books and films by Cocteau and members of his circle.

The museum has been looking for a more spacious location for the collection for some time. In the 1980s, officials tried to interest the Newport Harbor Art Museum in building a wing for the Cocteau material, but they were turned down. (The Newport Harbor’s collection is limited to California art.) A year ago, officials attempted to move the collection to a site in Laguna Beach, but negotiations fell through.

“We weren’t able to find another space,” Crost said Monday. The status of the current negotiations “sounds vague because we’re vague,” she apologized, saying the staff was not informed of the closure until the last week of January. More news on the collection transfer should be available early next week, she said.

Meanwhile, “the response (from the public) has been phenomenal,” she said. “We’ve had 30 calls today. A lot of people visited (Monday morning). Our response to all those calls was, we’ve got to keep it open (until Friday).”

Cocteau, who died in 1963, was known for his sense of style and artistic versatility. He collaborated with leading early 20th-Century composers (Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud), choreographers (Leonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska) and artists (Pablo Picasso, Raoul Dufy). Today he is best known for his films--including “The Blood of the Poet” (1930) and “Beauty and the Beast” (1946)-- and for his contributions to the ballet “Parade” (1917).