Laguna Art Museum’s relocation looking likely

Barbara Diamond

Laguna Art Museum officials would like to move the venerable museum

from its coastal site closer to other cultural and art facilities in

town.

The City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to support the

museum board’s concept of relocating the museum to the Civic Arts

District that runs from the Laguna School of Art and Design on Laguna

Canyon Road to the Senior Center on Third Street. The district

includes three art festival venues, the Laguna Playhouse, the

proposed Community Center, the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, City

Hall and the proposed Village Entrance.

“The board thought the Village Entrance/Act V compromise was an

opportunity to come and put forth the idea of moving,” museum

President Igal Silber said.

Museum board members voted unanimously in favor of the concept at

their March 23 meeting, but finding a site and funding has not been

discussed, according to museum Director Bolton Colburn.

“We haven’t investigated enough to tell if it is realistic to find

place in the canyon,” Colburn said. “These are just exploratory

concepts.”

Former Planning Commissioner Greg Vail, who helped develop the

Civic Arts District, said that is where the museum belongs.

“What we thought about six or seven years ago was a civic heart

for Laguna Beach, where people would want to be,” Vail said. “I

highly endorse the concept.”

The notion of moving the museum to the Village Entrance is not a

new one. Bob Gentry floated the idea when he served on the council

from 1982 to 1994. It surfaced when then-Director Charles Desmarais

was exploring the idea of merging with Newport Harbor, which the

museum membership flatly rejected.

A mid-’90s merger proposed by the museum’s board of directors

verged on fruition and was settled only by court action and

negotiations that gave joint ownership and use to Laguna and Newport

Harbor (now called Orange County Museum of Art). Separate ownership

of the collection was quietly worked out last year.

“It makes perfect sense to make a cluster of major institutions,”

Councilwoman Toni Iseman said. “I am supportive, but it’s going to

take some work, and it’s going to take some money.”

Councilman Steve Dicterow, who joined with Mayor Elizabeth

Pearson-Schneider to sponsor the endorsement of the relocation

concept, said council support would make raising money easier for the

museum.

Pearson-Schneider said the city-owned Village Entrance probably

would not have the space for the museum. The tennis courts next to

the Festival of Arts, although city-owned, are under the purview of

the festival board, which has talked about putting a festival museum

or performing arts center there. The Canyon Tennis Club has

ferociously opposed being ousted from the courts in the past.

The Laguna Art Museum has dominated the corner of North Coast

Highway and Cliff Drive for more than 75 years.

It is said to be the oldest ongoing cultural institution in Orange

County, founded by a group of early Laguna Beach artists as a gallery

to display and sell their work.

Some of those artists who put Laguna Beach on the map as an Art

Colony began to donate their pieces, and the sales gallery slowly

transformed into a museum. The museum is noted for its collection of

early Southern California plein air artists -- artists who paint

outdoors rather than in studios.

Although expanded in 1986, the museum has insufficient space and

no dedicated parking.

“The museum has great needs,” Colburn said.

Given a magic wand, Colburn said, “we would want space big enough

to display our permanent collection permanently. We would want a

reception area, a dedicated space for events. We would want space for

education. We would want an ocean view, and we would want to be in

the center of the city.”

Colburn said no thought had yet been given to what would happen to

the Cliff Drive building if the museum moved.

Asked if it was not the ideal site for beach parking, Colburn

said, “I don’t even want to go there.”

Museum public relations director Stuart Byer said the lack of

parking at the Cliff Drive location hampers its use, but any

alteration to the building would have to be sensitively done, if at

all.

“However, to put all our iconic art venues within blocks of one

another would be great for visitors, and it would be great for the

museum to have parking,” Byer said. “And if we gained some square

footage, we could do a lot more.

“Our town has changed so much in the last 15 to 20 years, with

homes selling for $2 million. I would think people would want a

museum as sophisticated as Laguna has become.”