Claremont museum gets $10 million

When it opened in April 2007 in a converted citrus packing house, the Claremont Museum of Art had high ambitions for a fledgling, regional institution: Its annual budget of about $1 million would fund shows of “international significance and breadth,” and leaders would strive to build a $3-million endowment.

Now the breadth of possibilities has widened considerably, with the museum’s announcement of a $10-million gift from an anonymous Southern Californian.

The donor first visited the museum last year, liked its exhibitions and educational programs, and, after some courtship -- “it wasn’t ‘Oh, hi, here’s your check,’ ” Executive Director William Moreno said Wednesday -- signed over a gift of securities and real estate. The money comes with no restrictions on how it can be spent, Moreno said, and what to do with it will be high on the agenda of a long-range planning process that’s already underway.

The main current exhibition, through Aug. 31, is an extremely finite slice of recent SoCal music history: “Vexing: Female Voices From East L.A. Punk.” The scope broadens with the Sept. 21 opening of “Multiverse,” in which 11 artists from L.A.; Claremont; New York City; Istanbul, Turkey; and Bogota, Colombia, consider the theory that reality consists of many parallel universes.