Gluck to Donate $3 Million to Take Art to the Schools

Philanthropist Muriel Gluck will announce a $3-million gift today for a mammoth educational project that will take the visual arts to more than 68,000 elementary and junior high students in San Diego.

Gluck’s joint gift of $2 million to the San Diego Unified School District and $1 million to the San Diego Museum of Art is being made through the Maxwell H. Gluck Foundation, in memory of her late husband, who built a nationwide chain of women’s clothing stores. The funds will be used chiefly to employ about 50 visual artists to teach classes in each of the city’s 107 elementary schools and five middle schools.

Kay Wagner, the school district’s fine arts program manager, predicted that the program will have a dramatic effect on children’s educational development.

“It will make a lot of difference in a lot of children’s lives because we are not reaching a majority of kids in the arts,” Wagner said.

Gluck made the donation because she was concerned about cutbacks in the city schools’ arts education program, Wagner said.

Called “Young at ‘Art,” the comprehensive program will be designed to introduce the visual arts to the city’s children and to stimulate students’ non-verbal skills, Wagner said. The program will integrate the museum’s art collections, its staff and other resources as part of the schools’ educational curriculum. The program, which will supplement existing arts programs, will be run by the schools with the collaboration of the museum.

San Diego Museum of Art Director Steven Brezzo praised Gluck for the donation.

Gluck “was inspired by the realization that funding is being cut from (the city schools’) arts education programs, and students are being distanced more and more from the arts,” Brezzo said. He referred to the program as a “national model.”

“It’s so well funded that it allows the kind of depth that can impact the students; it’s long-term,” Brezzo said.

Gluck, a Los Angeles resident who maintains a home in San Diego, declined to comment directly about the program, saying she is reserving her comments for a news conference today at the school district’s Education Center on Normal Street.

Asked about the motivation behind her philanthropy, Gluck would only say, “I learned it from my husband. Every time I do this, I say, ‘Thank you, Maxwell.’ ”

Gluck’s donation will finance the program for at least three years. The program will have several elements, the most important of which is taking artists into classrooms throughout the district to give students hands-on instruction in creating art. Other elements are:

- The museum will send artworks in special exhibits into the classrooms, and the students will pay regular visits to the museum galleries.

- Children and their parents can take advantage of a four-lesson series of lectures designed to encourage an awareness of art in daily life.

- As many as 350 teachers will be instructed by renowned artists at the museum in a series of Saturday master workshops. The workshops are designed as continuing professional training.

- An after-school program has been

developed for selected middle schools with a large percentage of working parents and latchkey students, Wagner said.

- The museum will develop study guides for use by the teachers and students, focusing on the museum’s permanent collection and special exhibitions.

- Vans will be purchased and outfitted with print-making and silk-screening equipment and will travel from school to school to introduce students to the museum.

Although most of the grant funds go for artists’ salaries, some of the money will pay for studio materials and for the purchase and outfitting of the program’s so-called art mobiles, the educational vans.

Fund Could Grow

The $3-million grant could grow to $3.5 million over the course of the program, said a spokeswoman for Gluck.

Gluck has continued to support her husband’s principal charities: the San Diego Opera, Scripps Clinic and the museum. She did drop one institution from the list, however. In 1986 she contributed $250,000 to the San Diego Symphony to help stave off bankruptcy.

But, when the Symphony canceled its entire season later that same year, Gluck was incensed, telling one newspaper, “I’m not prepared to do another thing” for the symphony. She hasn’t.

Gluck’s largess has recently been channeled into the opera’s traveling educational ensemble, a weekly classical chamber music program in the Scripps Clinic lobby as well as the installation of a plaza at the clinic, and into the Maxwell and Muriel Gluck Gallery at the museum.

Gluck was introduced to school district officials by Sharon LeeMaster, a San Diego arts consultant whose husband is a schoolteacher.

Time of Tumult

The new educational program comes at a time of tumult for the visual arts in San Diego. A half-dozen key commercial galleries have closed over the last two years because of a lack of interest in collecting. Recently, the San Diego Unified Port District shelved its public art program after commissioners failed to approve the winners of two public contests.

Gluck’s gift “is a tremendous boost to the arts morale of the city and to the future,” Brezzo said. “It will do more to develop future arts audiences than any project in the past 25 years. This could develop a whole new generation of enthusiasts.”

Wagner added: “We will be looking from day one to get other funding. This may encourage other people to get involved.”