Exhibitionists : Sponsor of Laguna Show Is an Independent, Skilled Group of Contemporary-Art Boosters

If you write a check to support an art show developed by a museum, you’ll probably get the red-carpet treatment. But what if you’re an aspiring patron who dreams of hands-on involvement in exhibitions, from the selection of a proposal to the choice of a venue?

This Walter Mitty-style dream comes true every year for active members of the Fellows of Contemporary Art, sponsors of “Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place” at the Laguna Art Museum through Jan. 21.

A nonprofit, unaffiliated group based in Los Angeles, the Fellows were founded 20 years ago. The catalyst was Norton Simon’s controversial takeover of the Pasadena Museum of Art, a pioneering showcase of contemporary work. When he installed his own art and changed the institution’s focus, its support group ceased to be supportive.

But they soon regrouped as the Fellows, with the mission of mounting exhibitions of work by contemporary California artists at various California institutions.

Initially, as president Diane Cornwell explains, members of the group’s exhibition committee visited hundreds of studios to look at new work. The resulting exhibitions of emerging artists were chosen together with “whomever had accepted the job of being curator.”

In recent years, however, the Fellows have acknowledged that professional curators insist on making their own decisions about the content of their shows.

“That was a shock to some of the older Fellows who had done this very, very time-consuming and exciting selection process in the early days,” says Cornwell, a member since 1980. “I guess the more we worked with established museums, the more this other trend began to develop. Obviously, you can’t tell a curator who they cannot pick.”

The group of 140 men and women (33 of whom live in Orange County) includes both sophisticated collectors and people just learning about contemporary art. “No one,” says Cornwell, “is excluded or included on the basis of how much they know.”

Members can play catch-up by attending the Fellows’ numerous events, which include studio visits, customized lectures by curators reporting on recent finds and new exhibition ideas, and art-related trips in the United States and abroad that include visits to private collections.

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For someone like Laguna Beach resident Joan Rehnborg, a member since 1987, the biggest treat, she says, is “hanging around with an array of art-experienced people.”

“For one solid year I just followed along at the shoulder of Gordon Hampton, a wonderful octogenarian who collects several artists in depth, including [Abstract Expressionist painter] Lee Krasner.”

Rehnborg, who has taken Fellows-organized trips to London and the former Soviet Union, praises the resulting “art attack” that results from the art-focused itineraries of such excursions.

The trips and perks are also a means to an end: equipping the Fellows with the know-how to organize exhibitions. Once a year, the long-range planning committee sends out letters inviting proposals from a short list of curators whose work has come to the group’s attention. Typically, each curator makes a slide presentation to the committee and any other interested members.

The Fellows’ board of trustees makes the final decision, based on the committee’s recommendation. One key criterion is the track record of the curator, who may be an employee of an art institution or a free-lancer.

Despite occasional mild controversies over specific works of art, the decision process tends to be “collegial,” Cornwell says, “because most of the people tend to be pretty open-minded about art.”

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When the selected curator is a free-lancer, the Fellows locate appropriate venues for the shows. (Most travel to several institutions within California or across the country.) One board member serves as a liaison for each exhibition, keeping artists, venue, writer and printer on track during months of planning.

Funded primarily by annual dues ($500 per person, $300 for members under 40), the Fellows have received seven National Endowment for the Arts grants. Earlier this month, the group held its first-ever fund-raiser, an anniversary gala and silent auction that netted approximately $40,000.

That’s enough to seed a modest exhibition (more expensive Fellows-supported shows can cost up to $80,000). The group generally finds matching funds or requires a contribution from the art venues.

The Fellows typically work on one show a year, either a group exhibition of emerging artists or a retrospective of an artist in mid-career. In addition to Foulkes, artists honored with an in-depth survey include Vija Celmins (1979), Craig Kauffman (1981), William Brice (1986), Jud Fine (1988), Roland Reiss (1991) and Kim Abeles (1993).

To date, the Fellows have sponsored 21 exhibitions at 34 venues. While reviews have been mixed overall, a few shows--such as “Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, 1960-1980,” curated by former Laguna Art Museum director Charles Desmarais--have been lavishly praised.

A key component of each exhibition is the copiously illustrated catalogue, usually written by the curator, often with additional essays by artists, curators, critics and art historians. These are costly but crucial documents that preserve the concept of an exhibition long after the individual works are returned.

The Fellows hold the copyright to the catalogues, “so we do have some leverage there,” Cornwell says. “[But] it’s not that we would ever try to rewrite a catalogue. We would never step on the toes of a writer.”

Desmarais, now director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, heartily agrees.

“The agreement you sign gives them copyright, but they grant back to you the right to reprint any time you want, as long as you credit them,” he says. “[The Fellows are] such an incredible group that is so respectful of the artists, the curators and the catalogue authors.

“It’s a very rare organization that seems to have no other agenda than to promote good things for the community and for the artist and the field [of art].”

Oddly enough, “Proof”--shown at the Laguna Beach museum in 1992--is one of the few conceptually based exhibitions sponsored by the Fellows.

“Generally,” agrees Cornwell, “it is more about the art than about the idea. But I don’t know that it is a formulated policy.”

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The Fellows do embrace new media, however, as evidenced by their support of a video series produced by the Long Beach Museum of Art since 1989.

The Foulkes exhibition is the third Fellows-sponsored exhibition to originate at the Laguna Art Museum (the other one was “Changing Trends: Content and Style--12 Southern California Painters,” which opened there exactly 13 years ago).

“There was a lot of interest in [Foulkes] as an artist,” Cornwell says. “He seemed like a logical person for us to exhibit. He hadn’t had a major retrospective and he certainly is an important California artist . . . . The curator [Marilu Knode] and Rosetta [Brooks, who wrote a catalogue essay] had done a lot of work on him.”

At the time the exhibition was proposed, Cornwell adds, “Charles was director, and he was very interested in having the show. Maybe he said, ‘I hear you’re going to do [a Foulkes show] and I’d like to have it.’ It’s not too cut and dried. Then he left, but by that time everything was underway.”

* “Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place” continues through Jan. 21 at the Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. (714) 494-8971.