Texas Likely to Get Irvine Museum’s Cocteau Collection

The Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas at Austin is poised to become the new home of the 2,000-piece collection of Jean Cocteau’s art owned by the Severin Wunderman Museum, which closed here last month.

The Austin campus is an obvious choice because the university’s Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center is the repository of a major collection of Cocteau archival materials, said to be second in size only to the Wunderman collection.

Another inducement, according to one source, was the university’s budding $20-million to $25-million campaign for a new building to house both the art gallery and the research center. About half the target amount has been raised in pledges, the source said.

According to a Wunderman Museum source, no Orange County art organization has offered to house the Cocteau collection, assembled by the Belgian-born Wunderman, president of the Severin Group, manufacturers and distributors of Gucci watches.

Papers are on file with the California attorney general’s office, which must ascertain that such an out-of-state transfer of a nonprofit institution’s assets is in keeping with the institution’s articles of incorporation. A spokesman for the office said a decision is expected in a few days.

Opened in 1985 in two cramped rooms on the second floor of the Severin Group’s building, the museum claimed to house the largest collection outside France of work by the playwright, librettist, film director and painter. Holdings include artwork, manuscripts, books and films.

For years, the museum searched for a spacious location and--given Cocteau’s theatrical output--more collaborative possibilities with performing arts institutions.

According to one source, the only institution in California considered as a potential recipient of the Cocteau collection was the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center.

Anna Graham, public information officer at the Hammer Museum, said that although the Wunderman Museum did not accept the institution’s proposal to house the collection, “Texas has a magnificent collection of works on paper, and we are pleased they will have this collection.”

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The Hammer Museum had offered to involve several academic and archival departments at UCLA in Cocteau studies and programming, including French, English, art history, theater, film and TV, and the film and TV archives, said Graham.

Austin, however, offered not only a new building but a track record of enthusiasm about Cocteau. In the early ‘80s, the Huntington Art Gallery showed a major French traveling exhibition of Cocteau’s work, and in 1984, students and professional actors mounted a French production of Cocteau’s play “Orphee.”

In recent years, however, such cooperative efforts of the French and theater departments have not been pursued, in part because of financial constraints, according to Dina Sherzer, chairwoman of the French and Italian departments.

The Huntington Art Gallery currently owns about 11,000 objects, including a 10,000-piece print and drawing collection spanning the 15th and 20th centuries and significant holdings in contemporary Latin American art. A source at the University of Texas said it is hoped that the Wunderman collection will help the museum attract donations of more modern European works, which are sparsely represented in the collection.

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” (1938) and “Beauty and the Beast” (1946)--and for his contributions to the ballet, “Parade” (1917).