A California collection

Laguna Art Museum will pay tribute to its major donors in an eclectic exhibition opening Sunday.

“Collecting California: Selections from Laguna Art Museum” encompasses 83 works of art from the 1830s to 2007, all of it donated “” or funded by donations.

The show is the second in a “bracketed” set of exhibitions intended to reestablish the museum’s reputation as a repository for important California art, said museum Director Bolton Colburn.

The exhibitions were funded by a grant obtained in 2005.

The initial show was a first-ever major exhibition of William Wendt’s works in November 2008.

Wendt was an early plein air painter in Laguna Beach and one of the founders of the Laguna Beach Art Assn., which began in 1918 and eventually morphed into the Laguna Art Museum.

Both shows also mark the 90th anniversary of the Laguna Beach Art Assn., Colburn said.

“Collecting California,” like the Wendt exhibition, includes a major book publication that extends the reach of the museum show, Colburn said.

“We are acknowledging our significant donors and speaking to our core audience of local collectors,” Colburn said. “The exhibitions are intended to show that the museum is restored and whole, and doing important work.”

Colburn said the exhibitions will prove that the aborted 1995 merger between Laguna Art Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art has not diminished the Laguna museum’s focus. Due to the merger, the Laguna museum lost many seminal works of art.

The scope and breadth of the work is key component of the exhibition, he said.

The earliest work in the exhibit is a primitive painting of the San Gabriel Mission by Ferdinand Deppe, painted in 1832 when Deppe was on a botanical excursion in California. The latest is a 2007 work by Andy Moses.

Janet Blake, curator of collections at the museum, said the permanent collection began in the 1940s, after the death of Frank Cuprien, a Laguna Beach Art Assn. stalwart who left his estate to the organization.

The cover of the “Collecting California” book is one of the museum’s latest acquisitions, Cuprien’s “Golden Hour,” a luminous work and one of the few Cupriens in the museum’s permanent collection.

Donors recognized

The show recognizes significant donations by influential art collectors and art historians, such as Nancy Dustin Wall Moure, who donated the 1832 Deppe work in 1994, and whose contributions to Laguna Art Museum went far beyond actual donations. Moure, who curated shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and other major institutions, wrote definitive histories of California art and also contributed essays for exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum in the 1970s. She has to date donated more than 40 works of art and other materials.

Many other donors also helped build the museum’s permanent collection.

One is Lois Outerbridge, the wife of noted photographer Paul Outerbridge “” whose works are now found in major museums worldwide “” and who lived in Laguna Beach.

After Paul Outerbridge died in 1968, his wife bequeathed a huge trove of photographs to Laguna Art Museum, which were gathered into a traveling exhibition that raised the late photographer’s profile “” and the museum’s “” nationally during the 1970s. Most of the Outerbridge works were sold in the mid-1990s, however, in what Colburn describes as a “controversial” deaccessioning. The funds from that sale have been dedicated to purchasing modern works by California artists, which are credited to the Outerbridge donation in the show.

Building 80 years old

Blake noted that this year marks the 80th anniversary of the museum building, opened in 1929 on land partially donated by Howard Heisler, who owned what is now Heisler Park.

The museum’s basement floor consists of large concrete tiles with the names of early donors to the building effort, including many early painters and their families.

The donors paid $1.50 each for the honor of having their names embossed on the flooring, Blake said.

Jeremy Fish

Also opening Sunday in the upper gallery is “Jeremy Fish: Weathering the Storm,” a collection of Route 66-inspired works by the San Francisco-based artist.

Fish said his images depict a “fallen America” and were inspired by a trip through the Southwest that he took with his father. The ironic, often humorous images are framed in hand-carved teak, designed by the artist and fashioned by a wood-carver in Indonesia.

In an introduction to the exhibit, Grace Kook-Anderson, the museum’s curator of exhibits, writes: “Fish is an artist who grapples with our modern condition by exploring places, stories, and legends that have been passed down through generations. ‘Weathering the Storm’ is a look into the American landscape, with a particular focus on the events that we have struggled with collectively. Through this, he looks at the loss of industry in America, which once roared with promise and prosperity and once defined the landscape and the nation.”

Fish, a graphic designer and fine artist, was to be the museum’s first artist-in-residence, but that designation fell through, he said. Fish’s T-shirt designs are available in the museum store.

If You Go

What: “Collecting California: Selections from Laguna Art Museum;” and “Jeremy Fish: Weathering the Storm”

When: Sunday to Jan. 17

Where: Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach

Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on First Thursdays Art Walk; closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s days.

Admission: $12 for adults; $10 seniors, students and active military; children 11 and younger free.

Information: (949) 494-8971 or www.lagunartmuseum.org