MOCA Launches Drive for $25 Million : Art: Most of the funds will go to building up the museum’s endowment. Almost $13 million already has been pledged.

In an ambitious move to secure the future of its creative mission, Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art has launched a $25-million fund-raising drive. Announcing the campaign on Thursday--with half of the money already pledged--MOCA Director Richard Koshalek said that most of the funds will go into an endowment to support the museum’s programs.

The move was inspired by an economic and political climate that has threatened arts funding for the past few years, Koshalek said. “At a time when the National Endowment for the Arts is being questioned and corporate support for the arts has diminished, our trustees and staff felt that it was essential to guarantee that our program would not be vulnerable. Institutions are fragile, and their fortunes can change quickly.”

About $20.5 million will be used to raise the museum’s current $30-million endowment to about $50 million. Income from endowment interest will support exhibitions, the permanent collection, education programs and artist-led initiatives for community outreach. Some of the funds will be earmarked for shows of emerging artists’ work and exhibition research, two areas that rarely appeal to corporate supporters, Koshalek said.

Of the remaining $4.5 million, $1 million will fund a new education center, $3 million will be used for operating income and $500,000 will be applied to capital improvements on MOCA’s buildings.

The museum coordinated its announcement of the campaign with the reopening on Sunday of its Temporary Contemporary facility in Little Tokyo because the massive warehouse-like space houses many of MOCA’s most adventurous exhibitions and symbolizes the institution’s creative edge.

But, as is customary in major capital campaigns, the museum had amassed considerable support before going public with its plan. Since the first of the year, during the campaign’s “private phase,” trustees and other MOCA supporters have pledged a total of $12.5 million, said David Laventhol, MOCA board chairman and editor-at-large of Times Mirror Co., parent company of The Times.

Sydney and Audrey Irmas have given $3 million. Donations of $1 million each have come from Thurston Twigg-Smith and Eli and Edythe Broad. (The Broads, who announced their donation two weeks ago, earmarked their funds for exhibiting MOCA’s permanent collection in its primary facility on Grand Avenue.) The museum has also received a major gift from an anonymous donor, as well as funds from James Burrows, Betye Burton, Gilbert Friesen, the Annenberg Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and the Times Mirror Foundation.

“We arrived at a goal of $25 million as an amount that is do-able, but won’t force us to have a another campaign in a few years,” said trustee Audrey Irmas, who is co-chairing the campaign with Laventhol and Frederick M. Nicholas, MOCA chairman emeritus.

“It won’t solve all financial needs for the future, but it will certainly get us into the 21st Century in a pretty solid way,” Laventhol said.

The public phase of the campaign is slated to conclude in 1998. When the drive is complete, endowment income is expected to provide about 30% of the museum’s annual operating budget, which currently stands at $8.8 million.

One result of the campaign already can be seen. The new education center, designed by architect Frank Gehry and located at the Temporary Contemporary, is being inaugurated with artist Vito Acconci’s orientation project for the exhibition, “1965-75: Reconsidering the Object of Art.” The center’s reading room also has been built. Two additional components, an artists’ studio workshop and an interactive media space, are expected to be complete in the fall of 1997.