Judge Refuses to Block Museum Merger

A judge refused Friday to block the Newport Harbor-Laguna art museum merger but set an Aug. 1 court date to hear merger opponents’ objections.

Superior Court Judge Raymond J. Ikola denied claims by the Motivated Museum Members group that “irreparable injury” would occur if the merger, made official on Tuesday, proceeds. Ikola said he wants to give the newly formed Orange County Museum of Art time to prepare its defense against the opponents’ charges of false assertions and unfair tactics.

The opponents, who want the 78-year-old Laguna museum to remain autonomous, are hoping to stall the merger at least until Aug. 5, the date of a meeting at which they will try to recall the Laguna museum trustees and reverse the merger.

Under the bylaws of the new museum, members of both the former museums--about 4,000 in all--will be able to vote Aug 5. That would dilute the voting power of the 2,000-strong Laguna contingent, Belinda Blacketer, attorney for the opposition group, said Friday.

Ikola said he may decide at the Aug. 1 hearing to postpone the Aug. 5 meeting. But he did not comment on any of the opponents’ objections, which include claims that trustees lied when they said the Laguna museum risked insolvency without a merger.

The museum “was not broke nor was it verging on insolvency,” Blacketer wrote in papers filed with the court. Trustees “never offered” members financial records “upon which [trustees] based their predictions.” Trustees also “never notified” members officially that the museum was in financial trouble.

“If they can justify [the financial need for merging], a lot of us will stop fighting,” Motivated Museum Member John Bing said this week. “But the fact they are so secret makes us wonder if there isn’t more to the story.”

Charles D. Martin, president of the new museum, said Friday that the “Laguna museum barely got by every month. The cash it had on hand each month was like $10,000 or $50,000 and its monthly costs were $100,000, so it was close to insolvency on a continuing basis.” Only trustees’ donations and fund-raising kept the museum afloat, he said, and “trustees can’t continue to do that.”

In recent years, he added, trustees “widely appealed to the Laguna community for financial support and basically no one wanted to open up [his or her] pocketbooks and help.”

Martin asserted that financial records would not reflect the strain on trustees. He said their chief reason to merge was cost-savings through economies of scale.