Art Museum Merger Hits Hard

* Is the wealth of a community based solely on the per-capita income of its resident population? If so, Laguna Beach would rank near the top of the list. Unfortunately, bank accounts, investment portfolios, BMWs, and houses on the “hill” are not the only things that gauge the richness of the community.

Cultural wealth is, to me, of equal if not greater importance than dollars and cents. When these two things work in harmony, all of our lives as well as the life of the community is enriched. However, when financial support for cultural heritage wavers, it is that very heritage and history that will undoubtedly suffer.

Laguna Beach and its deep-rooted cultural heritage stand at the crossroads of a major setback. The Laguna Art Museum is weeks away from becoming just another memory of Laguna’s bygone era.

Granted, [members of] the Board of Trustees feel their backs are to the wall and a merger with the Newport Harbor Art Museum is the only logical solution to the museum’s financial woes. And granted the institution has perhaps alienated itself from the artists’ community as well as the general population of Laguna Beach over the past decade. But as an artist who has lived and worked here for the past 20 years, I don’t feel the museum owes me anything other than the maintenance of Laguna’s art history and that of art in California.

The museum represents a cataloged history of this community, the artists, the writers, the actors and the characters who created many of the reasons we are all here.

All the BMWs and bank accounts won’t seem so important, as we will all be in the cultural poorhouse.

JORG R. DUBIN

Laguna Beach

* The thought of giving a piece of our city’s heritage to the city of Newport Beach has and is giving me great heartache, sadness and anger!

As a Laguna Beach resident and the daughter of a great advocate (Barbara Steele Williams) of the museum, I have a great sense of her being slapped in the face now that she is gone.

My mother gave greatly of her time and money in her belief that the museum is a great heart of the local artists’ history, the California Plein Air painters and an important cultural cornerstone in our city.

She was very much against the merger in the past, and I am sure that were she here today she would be lobbying strongly against it.

Can anyone imagine an “art colony” with no art museum? My mother couldn’t, I can’t, the founders didn’t and the future shouldn’t have to.

SUSAN BARTLETT

Laguna Beach

* In recent days there has been considerable coverage on the proposed merger between the Laguna Art Museum and the Newport Harbor Museum, most of it pretty negative. I, for one, feel that while the institutions have different missions, there are enough similarities that both could benefit from a central management. Not only could savings be realized, but a stronger management structure could, and should, emerge.

As for the future of the Laguna Beach facility, I am confident that it will remain in Laguna Beach as long as the citizens and the art community of Laguna Beach will indicate their desire for this with more than words. Frankly, I am amazed that in an art-oriented community such as Laguna, an art museum could only have 1,500 members (a good portion of those probably live in places other than Laguna.)

The Laguna Art Museum Board of Trustees could probably benefit from a lesson or two in public relations.

WALTER L. LACHMAN

Laguna Niguel