No Museum, but There’s Still Life in Art Scene

When it comes to the performing arts, this city bought its residents the equivalent of a Steinway grand piano with the Civic Arts Plaza.

But when it comes to the visual arts--at least in the eyes of some of the aesthetically conscious--the most Thousand Oaks seems willing to pay for is a cheap velvet painting.

“I think a lot of artists in this community are extremely unhappy that the Civic Arts Plaza did not have a museum,” said painter Michele Weston Relkin, best known for her portrait of Socks, Chelsea Clinton’s cat. “To build such an expensive building and call it an arts plaza, it’s a very controversial position, but a lot of us felt snubbed. It’s great--if you’re in the performing arts.”

Others strongly dispute such assertions, pointing to the city-owned Thousand Oaks Community Gallery and Arts Council of the Conejo Valley buildings as examples of the city’s dedication to the visual arts.

Increasingly, they also point to the Civic Arts Plaza itself, which now doubles as a showcase for Southern California painting and sculpture thanks to the work of CAPVAC, the Civic Arts Plaza Visual Arts Committee.

“The city gets knocked around a lot,” said Jane Brooks, who chairs the Thousand Oaks Arts Commission as well as CAPVAC. “But there aren’t many cities better than this one. There is nothing in Ventura County or the San Fernando Valley that compares to the Civic Arts Plaza.

“I’m tired of the negativity,” Brooks added. “I may be naive, but I really think there’s a lot of positive things happening here.”

Even Thousand Oaks’ biggest defenders acknowledge, however, that such an affluent, image-conscious city could more generously support the visual arts--especially now that its first stab at providing a showcase--the Conejo Valley Art Museum--is without a home and in limbo due to financial problems.

Most members of the City Council agree. But as is often the case in local politics, the bottom line on the arts issue is money. And some council members say Thousand Oaks just doesn’t have the cash to subsidize the visual arts more than it is already doing.

“Certainly, it’s well-documented that Thousand Oaks supports all of the arts,” said Councilman Andy Fox. “But I do think it’s a fair argument to say that the city could do more to help the visual arts.

“What it comes down to when people say that is, they want more money from us,” Fox added. “And it’s always a delicate balancing act between the things we have to do for the community and we want to do for the community.”

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Councilwoman Elois Zeanah also believes Thousand Oaks is not in a position to spend much more on the arts. But she argues that the city could use some of its existing assets--particularly the vacant piece of land beside the Civic Arts Plaza--to help bring an art museum to the area.

City officials have already proposed allowing the Ventura County Discovery Center, a planned children’s science museum, to locate at the park between the Civic Arts Plaza and the vacant property if its supporters can get the project off the ground.

“I feel that we have an opportunity to enhance the Civic Arts Plaza using the vacant parcel on the east side for an art museum of some sort,” Zeanah said. “I believe we should reevaluate the use for that property. Before we give away the property, we should give the community a chance to propose alternative uses.”

The visual arts in Thousand Oaks have had a tumultuous history. The Conejo Valley Art Museum, founded in 1976 by a group of local art aficionados, has never been able to find solid funding or a permanent home--even after a promise in 1994 by a Santa Barbara man who said he would give the museum $5 million in art from his collection if it acquired an appropriate space.

Yet despite its unintentionally nomadic nature, the Conejo Valley Art Museum has hosted numerous international traveling exhibitions, including works from such renowned artists as Christo, Robert Rauschenberg and Ansel Adams.

In 1985, the museum took shelter at the former Conejo Library building at Wilbur Road--rent-free, thanks to the city. But the museum’s volunteer administrators fell badly behind in their utility bills, accumulating a debt of about $14,000 by the time Thousand Oaks sold the building in 1990.

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The bill went unpaid for years, creating an icy situation between Thousand Oaks officials and the museum--particularly since museum administrators continued to ask the city for money.

The museum has been without a home since 1994, when it had to leave a donated space at the Janss Mall near Toys R Us due to mall renovation. It still organizes the annual outdoor Thousand Oaks ArtWalk.

“The Conejo Valley Art Museum is in storage,” said Maria Dessornes, its current director. “We’ve gotten $1,000 here, $2,000 there [from the city] for our ArtWalk, but when it came to our Wilbur facility, we were not getting a lot of help other than the free space. We were housing a bunch of other arts organizations, and we were working our fingers to the bone. We asked for a sign to the museum, and we never got it.”

Some artists say the Conejo Valley Art Museum is a doomed effort, due both to its troubled history with Thousand Oaks and to its current leadership. New blood is needed to bring a museum to the city, they contend.

“I don’t mean to knock anyone, but there is a need for more experienced direction in my opinion,” said Phyllis Doyon, a local painter. “The museum concept needs a fresh start.”

“I do think we have grown enough where we could support a museum,” said Iris Carignan, a painter and longtime member of the Westlake Village Art Guild. “Whether we should have the same people running it is the real question.”

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Although Thousand Oaks is without a large, secure venue to host traveling exhibitions, the city does provide a place for local artists to show their work: the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery.

Located next to the Newbury Park branch of the Thousand Oaks Library in what was once a Ralphs supermarket, the community gallery is, by all accounts, a success.

Since it opened about five years ago, the gallery has always run in the black and is booked solid until 1998, said Margaret Travers of the Arts Council, who sits on the facility’s steering committee.

“We’ve had only a few weeks in that entire time where we were not showing something,” Travers said.

Moreover, the same dozen or so arts groups that pleaded to the City Council for a community gallery are still active in its operation, Travers said.

“I’m a working artist, I work six or seven days a week at my craft, and the Conejo Valley has been very good to me,” said Doyon, whose work will be part of an exhibit at the gallery March 13-29. “The gallery is a great place.”

Relkin, whose picture of Socks eventually became part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution titled “Tokens and Treasures: Gifts to 12 Presidents,” said she too believes the community gallery is excellent.

But because Conejo Valley artists need a place to sell as well as show their work, she and about 15 others have launched a private, entrepreneurial effort: Gallery 9. It recently relocated from Agoura Hills to Janss Marketplace.

As Relkin is quick to point out, however, small galleries could never substitute for a local museum where everyone from children to adults can indulge in art.

She believes the time has come for a full-time art museum in Thousand Oaks that would showcase traveling exhibitions as well as a decent collection of its own.

“The reason behind Gallery 9 is for local artists to have a place to show and sell their work, but it does not fill the need for a museum, of course not,” Relkin said.

“I think it’s really important that we not be known as a soccer community, and I say that as a mother. I think we need to be more than that.”

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The plans for the Civic Arts Plaza originally included a gallery space. But as the center’s budget rose, the gallery was abandoned.

CAPVAC is bringing art to the airy hallways and walkways of the performing arts center. And the committee, undergoing a reorganization to fall under the city’s Theatres Department and the Civic Arts Plaza Board of Governors, is turning in an enthusiastic new direction after some internal wrangling, according to several members of the arts scene.

But the public building, which also functions as City Hall, does not have the security measures necessary to store and exhibit priceless works of arts.

Some local artists are still left wondering what might have been--and what should be--for the visual arts in Thousand Oaks.

“The visual arts have not been served,” said Carignan, who has been a Conejo Valley resident for 28 years and now lives in the Westlake neighborhood. “The Civic Arts Plaza became a performing arts plaza, much to the dismay of the local art community.

“If you’re looking at bringing culture into the community, money should not have been a factor, but in the case of the Civic Arts Plaza, it clearly was,” she added. “That’s the only way to explain what happened.”