A Change of Scenery in Santa Barbara

“What brought me to Santa Barbara?” asks Robert H. Frankel, new director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. “You mean apart from the fact that it’s one of the world’s most glorious places?”

On the job since Jan. 1, Frankel is still overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of his new home, but he has another reason for transplanting himself from Norfolk, Va., where he directed the Chrysler Museum for the past five years. “What’s most impressive here is the commitment to make things happen, the commitment to excellence,” he says.

“When one looks at the history of the museum, which is privately funded, from its beginnings it has been based on the commitment to provide services to the community that would not be here otherwise. That is clearly true of the museum’s collection, 90% of which consists of contributed objects, and its exhibitions. But it is also true of visual art programs for the schools. We provide studio education in schools that wouldn’t have it otherwise and in many instances we provide buses to bring schoolchildren to the museum.”

The diverse character of the collection also reflects the museum’s private patronage, he says. Founded in 1941 with 65 objects ranging from antiquities and Asian art to European and American painting, the collection has an eclectic core that has expanded to about 16,000 objects during the past 55 years.

Frankel, 52, is a specialist in 16th and 17th century European art who was educated at Miami University, the State University of New York at Binghamton and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. His appointment ended a 15-month search that considered 32 candidates, says Leslie Ridley-Tree, president of the museum’s board of trustees. His 25-year track record as an art administrator--at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington and the Chrysler Museum--plus his business acumen, passion for art and accommodating personality made him the right man for the job, she says.

Frankel’s arrival isn’t the only news at the museum, however. A re-installation of the Asian art collection has nearly doubled its display space, from 1,400 square feet to 2,550 square feet. Curator Susan Tai has selected about 250 prime examples of scrolls, paintings, textiles and costumes, ceramics, woodblock prints and statuary from the museum’s 2,500-piece holding. They are on view in two galleries equipped with handsome new cases designed and built in-house. The most dramatic element of the new installation is a group of four large Chinese figures, set into a curved white framework that sweeps around one corner and draws visitors closer.

A much larger project, announced last September and still involved in the city’s permitting process, is a 13,000-square-foot wing along State Street. Budgeted at $5.1 million for construction and endowment, of which $3.5 million has been donated or pledged, the three-story addition will provide a new store and cafe at street level, a gallery for 20th century art on the second floor and administrative facilities on top. Relocating the existing shop and offices to the new wing will free up space in the old building for a new gallery, a graphics study center and storage.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to expand awareness of the museum and its collections,” Frankel says of the project.

BIRTHDAY BASH: Operating under the theory that age should be a source of pride and that hitting the big One-Oh-Oh is a great reason for a party, the University of Southern California’s School of Fine Arts is gearing up for a centennial celebration. The big day is Saturday.

Festivities, scheduled for 2 to 5 p.m. on campus, include a “performance fashion show” by the design firm Epoch; a tour of the Fisher Gallery exhibition “Light in Darkness: Women in Japanese Prints of Early Showa (1926-1945),” organized by Kendall Brown, assistant professor of Asian art, and graduate students in USC’s museum studies program; birthday cakes created by celebrity chefs; and faculty book signings. The price of admission is $25, all of which benefits the school’s centennial scholarship fund.

The School of Fine Arts got its start in 1885 on a bluff in Pasadena overlooking the Arroyo Seco and the San Gabriel Valley. William Lees Judson, an English-born painter who was the school’s first dean, conducted classes on the present site of the Judson Stained Glass Studios.

The original classroom buildings and dormitories were destroyed by fire in 1910, and the program moved to temporary quarters at Miller’s Hall in Pasadena. Nine years later, the school joined the university’s campus in central Los Angeles and added architecture to its curriculum, but in 1979 a separate school of architecture was established. Today, the School of Fine Arts offers art history, studio arts, museum studies, public arts, photography and computer/video communications.

Centennial program information: (213) 740-6261.

REMEMBERING GRACE: In another celebration of local art history, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena will commemorate its 25th anniversary Friday from 6:30 to 10 p.m. The $60-a-ticket event--including hors d’oeuvres, entertainment and guided tours--will be an occasion for recalling the museum’s founding in a landmark 1926 building that had been known as the Chinese Treasure House.

The Chinese-style facility, at 46 N. Los Robles Ave., was built by art dealer and collector Grace Nicholson, who lived in an apartment on its upper floor. Her life and career will be surveyed in an anniversary show, “Collector’s Choice: An Exhibition in Honor of Grace Nicholson,” opening May 1. Chinese and Japanese ceramics, paintings and furniture, Japanese textiles, Tibetan and Sino-Tibetan art, and selections from her collection of Native American baskets will be on view.

While honoring its past, the museum is also celebrating a new gallery dedicated to longtime museum supporters Margot and Hans Ries, who have donated a large group of Southeast Asian ceramics to the institution. The gallery, which opened in late January, displays ceramics and sculpture from Thailand and Cambodia, Ming Dynasty furniture and Japanese folk ceramics. Information: (818) 449-2742.

INSTANT COLLECTIONS: Two schools in Santa Monica are staging a joint fund-raising effort, ART 5*5*96, designed to give 10-piece art collections to 20 people for a tax-deductible contribution of $100. Those who ante up will have a chance to win works donated by 200 artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, William Wegman, Ed Moses, Lisa Adams and Alison Saar. Proceeds will benefit the New Roads School, a year-old college preparatory school that currently serves grades six to eight but is expanding to grades six to 12, and the Santa Monica College of Design, Art and Architecture, a branch of Santa Monica College that provides its students with a studio environment and contact with professional artists.

A free preview of the artworks is scheduled for Saturday from 6 to 11 p.m. at artist Laddie John Dill’s studio, 1625 Electric Ave., Venice. The final ART 5*5*96 party is set for May 5, 6 to 11 p.m., at the Boritzer-Gray-Hamano and Ernie Wolfe galleries in Bergamot Station. A drawing at 9 p.m. will determine winners of the art collections. Information: (310) 838-1304.