Help comes aboard

Nautical Museum recruits graduate students to design, curate, write panels for Newport Beach Centennial exhibit.In preparation for a summer exhibition that takes an inside look at Newport Beach’s first 100 years, the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum is recruiting outsiders for help.

Three graduate students from Cal State Fullerton have offered to design, curate and write panels for the exhibition, which likely will open in June.

What the students lack in institutional knowledge of Newport Beach, they make up for in educational credentials and enthusiasm, said Nautical Museum Executive Director David Muller.

“I’ve known about the centennial for so long,” said Julie Perlin, a student in Fullerton’s exhibition design program and whose grandmother was a long-time Newport Beach resident. “It’s a chance to delve into a new topic and bring something to people who I know are going to benefit.”

Timed with the Newport Beach Centennial celebrations, the museum’s show will pay homage to the people and places that defined the city by featuring photographs, memorabilia and accompanying stories from the last 100 years.

Muller said one of the items he might request for the exhibition is an old bathing suit from the 1920s. Now-and-then-type facts, such as the prices of purchasing a lot, should also play prominently in the exhibition, Muller said.

He asked Mike McGee, head of Fullerton’s exhibition design museum studies program, to find interested students to help out with the project. The school is known nationally for producing future museum curators and exhibition designers.

This effort is part of what Muller described as his plan to make the museum more appealing to tourists and those who live outside of Newport Beach.

“I want to expand our opportunities and get information at a university level,” Muller said. “If we can get access to professors and students and their knowledge, it makes us better as an operation.”

The students are scheduled to have their first meeting with Muller and Suzanne Lockhart, the museum’s education director, on Monday.

They will choose from stories and topics submitted by the Newport Beach Centennial Committee and also seek out their own relevant information, Muller said. That will include finding longtime residents who can share information and vouch for historical accuracy.

Perlin said she is particularly interested in the exhibition because her grandmother, Dolores Perlin, was a Pirate Queen -- an honorary city leader for a day -- in the 1920s, a decade when Muller said Newport Beach was alive with debauchery.

“She [Dolores Perlin] was ecstatic that her granddaughter could participate,” Muller said.

The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum, which opened in 1986, has been located aboard a vessel for the last 10 years. McGee said it’s the first time his students have been asked to work on a nautical project.

“It gives them a body of information that isn’t what we normally deal with,” McGee said. “It’s exciting to see a different focus. The fact that it’s on a boat presents challenges.”

* ELIA POWERS is the enterprise and general assignment reporter. He may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or by e-mail at [email protected].