Anti-Merger Group Still Paints Dark Scenarios

Their first public meetings drew 150 people, max, last spring, and they were brushed off as “extremists.”

But in less than six months, Motivated Museum Members managed to persuade some 800 Orange County residents to vote against the Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger, which they decry as a “scam.” That merger was approved, but by a scant 27 votes.

As before, this latest defeat hasn’t fazed MMM, which has become the yapping dog at the heels of the merger forces whose efforts gave birth to the Orange County Museum of Art.

MMM, which claims a membership of several hundred, contends that it has never gotten a fair shake in stating its case to keep the Laguna Art Museum independent. Among its ongoing complaints are that Laguna trustees misled members about the museum’s financial condition, that the board had the advantage of easy access to the museum’s mailing list and that it had more time to lobby its case.

*

And while members say a level playing field is what they’re after, they also vow to continue dogging the issue until the Laguna museum is restored to its pre-merger status, something OCMA officials dismiss as so much tilting at windmills.

“To this day we have not been treated fairly,” MMM president Vern Spitaleri said recently.

MMM’s ranks include Laguna artists, art dealers, collectors, business owners and neighborhood association members. It emerged around the time that another, now-defunct anti-merger group was voicing concerns over losing the city’s “heart and soul,” prompting trustees to guarantee that the Laguna museum would remain open as an OCMA branch.

MMM counters that the 78-year-old museum is the tree--not a branch--one that was given root by some of the city’s most esteemed early residents, among them plein-air artist Edgar Payne. Some descendants of the museum’s founders hold lifetime memberships.

Spitaleri, a retired management consultant, said that he had, until recently, let his membership lapse; museum officials say there is no record of him holding a membership before this year.

The Laguna trustees had alienated area residents, he said, one of many charges raised in MMM’s second legal attempt to undo the merger.

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled against the group’s first suit Aug. 1, but MMM has demonstrated its tenacity in the face of defeat with a seemingly endless number of fronts on which to continue challenging the deal.

On Sept. 12, MMM’s lawyer, Belinda Blacketer, will ask a judge to consider an amended complaint. MMM now charges that in order to create a larger, more prestigious museum, Laguna trustees intentionally eroded local support by failing to notify members of expired memberships, ending a policy of granting free memberships to artists who donate work for fund-raisers and “substituting paid employees for volunteers.”

The suit further alleges balloting irregularities in the recent membership vote and that OCMA officials acted unethically in having the vote tabulated by three trustees (who work at local accounting firms) and in “buying” support for the vote by giving 500 free OCMA memberships to local law firm employees who performed pro bono work.

“This is just a part of what they did that has made us just furious,” said MMM’s John Bing, a management consultant.

OCMA board president Charles D. Martin flatly denies MMM’s latest allegations, but both sides expect MMM’s request for a new hearing to be granted.

The vote earlier this month to reverse the merger also included a move to oust Laguna’s 22 trustees, all of whom now sit on OCMA’s board. The effort failed, but no trustee kept his or her seat by more than 54 votes.

*

OCMA leaders admittedly were surprised by the close votes, although Martin said they didn’t see it as a rebuke.

Rather, he said, OCMA officials view the referendum as symbolic of Laguna Beach voters’ passionate desire to maintain the identity of the Laguna museum.

Consequently, the full OCMA board will consider such practical resolutions as keeping the seaside institution’s signs as they are now, Martin said this week. Earlier plans called for the addition of the OCMA name.

“The general principle here is to try and do things which will help preserve the local identity,” Martin said. To that end, the trustees Thursday approved a request by the Laguna Art Museum Heritage Corp., the group that is responsible for raising two-thirds of the annual operating budget for the Laguna operation, to reduce its budget from $400,000 to $268,000. Corporation officials were worried that they could not meet their portion of the larger amount.

In addition, trustees on Thursday set up a committee to review a motion approved by museum members recently to reconsider the sale of the remainder of its Paul Outerbridge photography collection. In April, a third of the collection was sold at Christie’s auction house. The rest has been consigned for auction in October. A decision on whether the sale will proceed isn’t expected until September, Martin said.

*

For all its tenacity in the courtroom, MMM isn’t the only one generating work for its lawyers.

OCMA trustees recently filed a suit of their own, alleging that MMM misused an OCMA membership list it obtained. Such lists may be used only to solicit money to obtain votes over museum affairs, says OCMA attorney Shelley M. Liberto. But, he said, MMM used the list to ask for money to fund its litigation against OCMA, among other things.

MMM officials label the charge “specious” and say it hasn’t broken, much less halted, their stride.

MMM will not lay down its arms, Spitaleri said, until “we have our museum back.”