OCMA’s Growing Pains Typical

What do the Orange County Museum of Art and one of its older, wealthier, internationally renowned cousins to the north have in common?

They endured similar labor pains, says Eli Broad, founding chairman of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA once faced criticism like that leveled more recently at OCMA, whose early detractors cried, “Art before the horse!”

“They said that about MOCA,” Broad said Sunday before being honored at an OCMA benefit. OCMA trustees were censured for putting financial concerns ahead of artistic vision when they merged the former Newport Harbor and Laguna art museums in 1996 to save both from what they saw as impending insolvency. (The Laguna museum has since broken off to operate independently.)

Naysayers likewise charged that MOCA “did it backward,” Broad said. In fact, two years before its opening in 1983, the nascent museum had a building and $13 million in hand, but four paintings in its collection, which now totals 3,700 pieces. Yet Broad, CEO of SunAmerica, a $50-billion financial empire, stood firm.

“You do things when the opportunity arises,” he said, expressing support for OCMA’s approach. “If they had the opportunity to merge to create a strong institution . . . it would have been a shame to lose it.”

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In fact, the 16-month-old Newport Beach museum’s annual budget has more than doubled to about $2.7 million since the 1996 merger. It added about $640,000 to its coffers Sunday with its annual Art of Dining fund-raiser at Newport’s Four Seasons Hotel, officials reported. That topped last year’s net by about $115,000.

Broad, honored with California artist Wayne Thiebaud, was invited because “he is one of the nation’s most respected art collectors” and an exemplary patron of the arts, said OCMA chairman Charles D. Martin.

Largely through the efforts of Broad and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, roughly 90% of the $200 million needed to complete construction of Los Angeles’ long-troubled Walt Disney Concert Hall has been raised. (Another $55 million was spent on designs.)

“I want to congratulate the board of the Orange County Museum of Art for the great job you have done in enriching the cultural heritage of Southern California,” the 64-year-old Brentwood resident told dinner guests Sunday.

Artistically speaking, OCMA officials have acknowledged they’re not where they want to be. Broad hasn’t visited OCMA. But, he said in a wide-ranging interview, the museum should continue to build a permanent collection, host top traveling shows and curate exhibitions worthy of consideration by other institutions.

“Give it time,” said the soft-spoken entrepreneur, who serves on the boards of a half-dozen major arts organizations around the nation. “This merger’s taken a lot of energy, and [OCMA] now has the support of a greater part of the Orange County business community and its leading citizens than it ever had.”

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That’s bound to snowball as the county continues to mature, Broad said.

“It’s a fairly new area compared to older Eastern and Midwestern areas, and you find that economic growth proceeds artistic growth by several decades.” As more people realize “you can’t take it with you, I think they are going to bequeath more art and money to the museum,” which, in turn, can afford to advance its artistic programs and acquisitions.

On another issue critical to OCMA--expansion--Broad said success doesn’t hinge on accessibility. OCMA trustees have long discussed moving to a larger, central site, perhaps beside the freeway-close Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Martin said Sunday no such decision has been reached.

Many fine museums aren’t easy to get to, Broad said. Brentwood’s new Getty Center, which has had to turn away visitors since opening in December, “may be next to the freeway, but it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get from the freeway up to the museum” via hillside tram.

Nor is a world-famous architect mandatory, Broad said. Orange County residents lost a chance to have a museum designed by Italy’s Renzo Piano--who just won the field’s top Pritzker Architecture Prize--when the former Newport Harbor museum fired him in 1990, citing rising costs and problems with his blueprint.

“Having a Pritzker-Prize winning architect puts you on the map,” Broad said. “Butthat’s not the only way to go, and having galleries that work is more important than who does the architecture.”

Broad was open to the idea of inviting a major museum such as the Getty or New York’s Guggenheim to open a satellite here. That notion was floated by Performing Arts Center chairman Mark Chapin Johnson upon his March announcement that center officials have agreed “in principle” to donate a seven-acre site beside the center for a new concert or multipurpose hall and, possibly, an art museum.

But, Broad said, the money would have to be raised locally. “No out-of-town museum is going to spend their money to create a museum in Orange County.”

OCMA has estimated its expansion costs at $60 million or more. The performing arts center expects to spend at least $100 million. Can that much money be raised simultaneously?

“People said you could never raise the money for Disney Hall,” Broad said. “But in the last two years, we’ve raised $184 million on a project that had a bad rap. It was ready to be buried; it was dead. So I think it’s possible. I think Orange County can walk and chew gum at the same time.”