ART : Crafts Get a Life on Museum Row : After a six-year period of uncertainty, the Craft and Folk Art Museum is reopening in a greatly expanded and much more visible new facility on Wilshire Boulevard.

The Craft and Folk Art Museum is back. After six years of planning, renovating and expanding, the museum will reopen today in a $5.5-million facility on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Curson Avenue.

The event marks the end of a long spell of shattered hopes and low visibility--punctuated by plans to build a tower that were dropped in 1992 for lack of funding, more than three years of camping out at the nearby May Co. and an additional 2 1/2 years of survival amid construction.

This is an institution with a lot of pent-up energy, so it’s making a splashy comeback. Today’s free public festivities include the opening of two inaugural exhibitions and an afternoon program of theatrical and musical performances, storytelling, craft demonstrations and workshops.

But the main attraction is the new facility, designed by Hodgetts + Fung Design Associates, a Los Angeles architecture firm. The museum’s familiar 1920s brick structure has been linked with a more modern building, across a central courtyard, in a 32,000-square-foot complex that doubles the museum’s former space and provides 150 feet of street frontage.

“The architects faced a tough challenge in tying the original 1920s building to the 1950s structure,” says the museum’s executive director, Patrick H. Ela. “But people who have walked through the new building are excited and energized by it. I think the architecture is working to bring people in.”

The museum’s staff members are far from the only people who have cause for jubilation, according to Ela. “The long-awaited opening will be celebrated by a lot of different people in different parts of the art community. We are joining our neighbors on museum row,” he says, referring to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the George C. Page Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Carole and Barry Kaye Museum of Miniatures.

The museum’s return gives visitors one more reason to head for the Mid-Wilshire District and helps to complete “the city’s cultural fabric,” he says. Commercial gallery owners also welcome the return, according to Ela. So do “makers of art who have been longing for a venue to show contemporary crafts.”

As for the public, visitors will benefit from the revival and growth of an institution that “uses objects as vehicles of communication and understanding between people and to build mutual respect,” Ela says.

In the last 30 years, the museum’s mission has shifted from emphasizing the aesthetic qualities of crafts and folk art to presenting objects in a fuller context, including their political and social implications, Ela says.

With a history of community involvement, the museum has been in the forefront of ethnically diverse programming. Its best-known activity is the 19-year-old International Festival of Masks, a community outreach program that culminates each October in a Parade of Masks and weekend celebration.

The museum’s dormant phase gave the staff time to strengthen its philosophy of “diversity and inclusion,” Ela says, and to refine a curatorial process that involves artists, educators and community outreach. “The concept is that we develop exhibitions in concert with and with the blessing of artists (and community representatives), as opposed to presenting the unique vision of a curator.”

One inaugural show, “Museum for a New Century,” presents the history of the museum in a timeline illustrated by objects, photographs and archival materials, and explores the museum’s future--along with the history and role of museums in the United States.

The second exhibition, “Points of View: Collectors and Collecting,” introduces collections of contemporary crafts and folk art recently given to the museum, including 200 pieces of Mexican folk art from a 600-item donation by Carolyn Warmbold in memory of her late husband, Ted, who died from complications of AIDS in 1989.

With galleries in both sections of the building, the museum can now stage two or more shows simultaneously. Upcoming exhibitions include Michael P. Smith’s documentary photographs of the Mardi Gras Indians of Louisiana, masks that illuminate youthful feelings and expressions, costumes from Okinawa and a retrospective of Sam Maloof’s wood furniture.

The reopening is billed as a homecoming and, indeed, it is for old-timers who recall the museum’s former incarnations.

Established in 1965 by Edith Wyle as the Egg and the Eye, the institution evolved into the Craft and Folk Art Museum in 1973, under Wyle’s direction. Ela joined the Craft and Folk Art Museum in 1975 as administrative director and became executive director in 1984.

Although the institution has become a full-scale museum with a permanent collection, a research library and an ambitious program of exhibitions, classes and community outreach, it is fondly remembered as a cozy gallery/shop/restaurant where you could see folk art shows, buy hand-crafted treasures and--in the days when eggs could be eaten with a clear conscience--order lunch from a lengthy list of omelets.

Much has changed. You won’t find a menu of egg dishes. There’s no restaurant at all on the premises, though plans are in the works to install one later this year in a mezzanine space currently used for a gallery.

But the shop is back, occupying 1,500 square feet on the ground floor and offering a selection of crafts, ethnic and folk art, books, gifts and jewelry. And spaces for exhibitions, offices, the library and educational programs have been vastly improved.

The museum outgrew its original quarters nearly a decade ago. In 1989 plans were announced for a new home at the same location. It was conceived as a mixed-use complex, known as Museum Tower, and slated to open in 1994. But the economy went sour and the developer was unable to finance the construction.

The museum’s trustees terminated its Museum Tower agreement in 1992 and began to develop more modest expansion plans. They already owned the museum’s building and parking lot, so they leased the adjacent property (with an option to buy it) and hired architects Craig Hodgetts and Hsin-Ming Fung to create a complex of two buildings and a connecting wing.

The museum found temporary quarters at the May Co. in 1989, but the historic department store closed on Jan. 31, 1993, after the merger of May Co. and Robinsons. Faced with a pending emergency, the architects rushed to finish the museum offices, then got back to work on the public spaces.

The renovation and expansion project has been a long haul, but Ela says he’s pleased with the results. Much remains to be done behind the scenes, but he’s spending this weekend at a round of public celebrations funded by Robinsons May and private parties feting major donors.

* Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5800 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 937-5544. “Community Homecoming,” performances of Mexican folk dance and Cuban salsa and jazz, storytelling, demonstrations of craft techniques. Today only, noon-5 p.m. Inaugural exhibitions: “Points of View: Collectors and Collecting,” through Sept. 7; “Museum for a New Century,” through Aug. 1. Hours: today, noon-5 p.m.; thereafter, Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Admission: free today; thereafter, adults, $4; senior citizens and students, $2.50; children under 12, free.