Museum Lets Down Public, Donors

I read with anger the article by Christopher Knight (“A Museum’s Misguided Mission,” Feb. 8) concerning the Laguna Art Museum’s de-accessioning of its collection of Paul Outerbridge photographs.

During the early 1980s, I served on the museum’s acquisition committee as an advocate for the collecting of photographs that would reflect the museum’s mission of “ . . . collecting the art of California and related works with an emphasis on the 20th century.”

At that time, the museum treated the Outerbridge collection as one of its most valued assets and perceived it to be the nucleus for further acquisitions of photographs representative of California modernism.

I was encouraged by the museum staff to approach collectors and artists to donate photographs to the museum collection. During this time, a modest number of works representative of the best of Southern California photography of the ‘60s and ‘70s entered the museum’s permanent collection.

When Charles Desmarais became the museum’s director, I resigned from the acquisitions committee. Because Desmarais had an extensive background as the former director of the California Museum of Photography and had previously curated several exhibitions of photography, it seemed the museum had the ideal advocate to enhance the photography collection.

The sale of the Outerbridge collection is not only ill-advised on ethical grounds, it is also a denial of the significance of Laguna Beach’s role in the history of modern photography.

In the 1930s, the eccentric pictorialist William Mortensen began a nationally prominent school of photography in Laguna Beach. During the ‘50s and early ‘60s, photographers William Current and Lewis Baltz lived in Laguna Beach and explored a minimalist vision of Orange County’s landscape and suburban sprawl.

Their photographs echo some of the precisionist characteristics of Outerbridge’s still-life photographs of the early 1920s. It would seem appropriate for the museum to have used its collection of photographs to investigate this history.

De-accessioning the Outerbridge collection is a betrayal of the museum’s obligation to the public it is intended to serve.

Artworks, especially those of the quality of the Outerbridge collection, should not be treated as the inventory of a retail business to be sold piecemeal to the highest bidder.

To do so is not only a betrayal of the public, but it is also a betrayal of the trust of the donor. Because of this action, the museum may find it difficult to attract future donations to its permanent collection.

JOHN UPTON

San Clemente

Professor, division of fine arts

Orange Coast College