Private Conversations

Privatization. It’s become the battle cry for arts organizations in the ‘90s, one that the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art has taken for its own.

As the city begins phasing out its subsidies to the museum, Bowers officials are drafting a proposal asking that city officials sign over the deed to its building and the land it sits on as well as the remainder of Bowers’ extensive permanent collection to the private, nonprofit board that governs the museum.

Bowers officials expect to put their proposal before the City Council within 90 days, arguing further that the museum board’s ability to raise funds from private sources will be greatly enhanced if all ties to the city were severed.

Both parties would appear to benefit from the deal--the city saves subsidy money, the museum gains assets. But everyone’s not convinced.

Councilman Ted R. Moreno, who has been the council’s leading critic against providing city support for the Santora Arts District in downtown Santa Ana, says he doesn’t like the idea of what he says would amount to “giving away” the Bowers to the private board.

The stately 65-year-old repository into which the city has poured millions of dollars is “our city’s crown jewel,” Moreno said, adding that he would vote against transferring the assets. “To turn around and say we don’t want it any more. . . Well, we have more to lose than to gain.”

The value of the property and the 40% of the permanent collection that the city owns has been estimated by museum and city officials at around $50 million, maybe more.

Since 1987, when a private, nonprofit board was established to run Bowers, the museum has received about $13 million in city subsidies. Santa Ana spent another $12 million on a major expansion completed in 1992. It allocated $1.5 million to Bowers this year, about 40% of the museum’s $3.4-million budget.

Whether the privatization plan as Bowers officials are shaping it is approved, in July the city will decrease its support by 10% per year until it zeros out a decade from now.

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From the museum board’s perspective, “The key issue here is that we’re fiscally sound in 2007,” said Bowers executive director Peter C. Keller.

The museum plans to launch a major endowment drive soon, and donors prefer to give cash and material goods to private institutions, Keller said.

“People don’t like endowing government,” he said.

Donors must be assured that their gifts will always be used as intended and not subject to political caprice, officials said.

“A number of renowned collectors in our area, as they get older, want to think in terms of where their collections are going to be maintained,” added Bowers trustee Lowell C. Martindale. “From our conversations with donors and consultants and contributors, we’ve developed the view that [privatization] will enhance our ability” to acquire those collections.

Furthermore, in conservative Orange County, philanthropists prefer to support cultural institutions that don’t receive public money, such as the $73-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, museum trustees said.

“We get the message from corporations and individuals that they will not give substantial amounts to [publicly supported] entities,” said 19-year trustee Ruth Seigle.

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The idea of privatizing Bowers surfaced in 1986 when a city-appointed blue-ribbon committee recommended ways to help the museum expand while easing its reliance on city funding, said Seigle, who sat on that committee. Operation by the private Charles W. Bowers Museum Corp. board was the first step, she said; ownership of the building and collection “is a natural evolution of the process.”

Roughly a year ago, the museum approached the city about the building and collection transfer. Recently, however, museum officials asked that the council hold off voting on the issue.

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The board needs more time to prepare for privatization, he said, and three weeks ago hired a consultant to help with fund-raising strategies for the museum’s planned endowment campaign.

Councilman Thomas E. Lutz said he supports the transfer of assets but added that he’d like a guarantee that the museum’s collection would always remain in Santa Ana. If privatization results in more donations, Lutz said, “it could relieve the city of its [funding] obligation” before 2007. (Council members Patricia A. McGuigan and Robert L. Richardson said they wanted more information before taking sides; several other council members did not return phone calls seeking comment.)

Moreno doesn’t believe that government-subsidized museums have difficulty attracting private dollars. He points to such stalwart operations as the federally owned Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Keller himself noted in a 1995 exhibit catalog that “corporations, foundations and individuals have enthusiastically responded to [Bowers] by contributing over $6 million in the last three years . . . .” Among such gifts was $1 million from the Anaheim-based Leo Freedman Foundation, which, by charter, does not give preference to private groups.

During the same period, private donors gave the museum between $6 million and $7 million worth of cultural art, said chief curator Armand Labbe, who has worked at the Bowers for 20 years.

“I can’t [predict] whether [privatization] would result in better or bigger donations,” said Labbe, but city support has “not impeded our ability to get donations” to the collection.

Still, some major donors such as the James Irvine Foundation won’t subsidize organizations that receive 25% or more of their budget from public agencies.

Moreno also wonders why trustees haven’t already started an endowment, knowing that city funding would begin to diminish this year. If they had tried--and failed because of the museum’s reliance upon city funding--their case for privatization would be stronger, Moreno said.

Museum officials explain that they had to raise $3 million to reopen the museum in 1992 after the expansion. Also, they wanted to enlarge their board, give tapped-out donors a rest and establish greater credibility before soliciting hefty endowment gifts, Keller said.

After two failed attempts, the museum recently won accreditation from the American Assn. of Museums (AAM), a crucial sign of maturity. Also since reopening, it has hosted major traveling exhibits and raised $700,000 to open its adjacent Kidseum for children, Keller said.

While the AAM hasn’t detected a nationwide trend in privatization of public museums, Keller notes that the steep decline in public arts funding nationwide has not eased. Locally, the situation is no better, he said.

“We have two options,” Keller said: to privatize and build an endowment, or continue to rely on city support. “But the city has too many other issues to fund. They started this whole idea [of independence] because they don’t want the burden of financing the museum forever and ever.”

Said Moreno: “As long as the Bowers is in Santa Ana, we’ll continue to support it. At what dollar amount, I can’t tell you. I’m only one of seven votes. . . . But I think the city has shown its commitment over the past 10 years, and that it wants to keep the Bowers as a cultural location for for Orange County.”

* DIRECTOR CHOSEN: Laguna Art Museum trustees selected Bolton Colburn as the museum’s new director. F27