Despite Member Opposition, Museum to Auction Photos

Trustees of the new Orange County Museum of Art voted unanimously Thursday to proceed with the sale of valuable museum photographs, despite a recent membership vote recommending against it.

The museum would have had to pay at least $105,000 to break its months-old contract with the auction house to whom it had consigned several dozen works by prominent Modernist photographer Paul Outerbridge, board President Charles D. Martin said.

Furthermore, “the membership has no authority over contractual matters,” Martin said. “It cannot vote to fire an employee or terminate a contract.”

Still, the decision “flies in the face” of about 800 members who voted against the sale in August, said John Bing, a member of Motivated Museum Members, which is suing to undo the Newport Harbor-Laguna Art Museum merger that formed OCMA.

The trustee’s decision “is arrogant disregard of the membership’s desire,” said Vern Spitaleri, president of that group.

Art experts outside of Orange County also have criticized trustees for parting with the works, considered among the former Laguna museum’s most distinguished assets. Trustees maintain that the photographs did not fit with the museum’s mission, which focuses on California art.

Outerbridge, an internationally respected artist, was an official photographer of the annual Pageant of the Masters when he lived in Laguna Beach before his death in 1958.

Proceeds from the works to be sold at Christie’s New York auction house on Oct. 3 will be put into the museum’s collection fund, Martin said. In April, 29 other Outerbridge works from the museum’s holdings were sold for $938,200.