Naomi Vine, 52; Headed Two O.C. Art Museums

Naomi Vine, who served as director of both of Orange County’s top visual art institutions during 6 1/2 years filled with change and controversy, died Monday of a brain tumor. She was 52.

Vine arrived in Orange County in 1995 as director of the Laguna Art Museum--her first job as a museum director. She landed the post with a strong combination of education and experience in art and business, worlds with often conflicting goals.

“She was absolutely extraordinary,” Southern California-based painter Peter Alexander said Wednesday. “Hers was a very difficult position because she had to take care of so many different facets: She had to tend to artists, to education, to the board, to a lot of money-making issues. . . . The fact that she was able to do all that with the grace that she did was remarkable.”

When she arrived, Orange County was in the middle of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, and arts institutions were struggling to weather an early-’90s recession. Many were scaling back or canceling expansion plans; others were undergoing wholesale restructuring.

She quickly found herself at the center of a fractious merger between the Laguna and Newport Harbor art museums that went through in 1996. That merger resulted in creation of the Orange County Museum of Art before disgruntled Laguna museum supporters regained independence for that facility the following year. Vine became director of OCMA, a position she’d held ever since.

After the merger she oversaw a $1.8-million expansion of OCMA that more than doubled the museum’s size. Still, it was considerably less ambitious than a planned $10-million expansion that was aborted earlier in the decade.

Under her leadership, OCMA’s endowment has increased sevenfold, from $1.2 million to more than $8.5 million now; its educational outreach programs have expanded; and she supervised the addition of more than 500 works to its permanent collection.

“It was Naomi’s vision, intelligence, professionalism and perseverance that brought this institution through some very tough times to its current strong position,” acting director Elizabeth Armstrong said Wednesday in a statement. “Her presence will always be felt here.”

But she was also embroiled in serious controversies during her Orange County tenure.

While still at the Laguna museum, Vine had to respond to critics when the board decided to sell off its collection of photographs by American Modernist artist Paul Outerbridge, a collection considered by many to be the most significant of Laguna’s holdings.

Art-world observers chastised the museum for treating the Outerbridge works as a source of income rather than an untouchable part of its permanent collection.

Vine’s predecessor, Charles Desmarais, who had been fired in 1994, said at the news of the impending auction, “The simple fact is that certain trustees smelled money . . . and applied a steady pressure to get those works sold at the first opportunity.”

Vine defended the decision to break up the collection, which the board made before she was hired, noting that the museum had tried and failed to find a public institution willing to keep it intact.

“Confronted with declining contributions and income, we must devote our limited resources to the most essential activities, as defined by our mission statement,” she said. “In this situation, the most ethical course of action . . . is to sell the artwork at public auction, which makes the photographs equally available to any interested buyer.” Proceeds from that sale of 70 of the museum’s 91 Outerbridge photographs were split between the Laguna museum and OCMA.

Vine, who grew up in Seattle, got her bachelor’s degree with a double major in art history and American literature from the University of Washington. She went on to earn a doctorate in art history from the University of Chicago as well as an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta.

Before coming to the Laguna museum, Vine had worked for New York City-based C.W. Shaver Co. as a fund-raising and nonprofit management consultant. She helped raise money for a variety of arts groups, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Currier Gallery of Art in New Hampshire, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the David Parsons Dance Company. While still employed by Shaver, she served as interim executive director of the Parsons troupe.

Her dual interests in art and business made her a prime candidate for the Laguna post at a time when board members were searching for ways to boost attendance and add to the museum’s endowment.

In 1999, she and art critic Dave Hickey organized “Peter Alexander: In This Light” for OCMA, an exhibition of work by the pioneering Light and Space movement painter.

“I had never seen that amount of [my] work together, ever,” said Alexander, who has served on the boards of both Laguna and OCMA in recent years.

That exhibition, Alexander added, “was generally praised, but that’s not the point. The point I’m making is that Naomi gave me the opportunity to experience that, and I’m very grateful for that.”

She is survived by her husband, Albert Milano, founder and managing partner of a Newport Beach-based fund-raising consulting firm, and their 11-year-old son, Victor.

The museum has established the Naomi Vine Memorial Fund in her memory. Museum officials said a memorial service will be held early next month.