Last-Minute Funding Keeps Museum From Becoming an Artifact

Some good news and some bad news came out of Monday’s Oxnard City Council meeting, as far as Carnegie Art Museum Director Andrew Voth is concerned.

The City Council decided to spare the city’s only museum--once targeted for elimination as a way to help reduce the city’s $2.8-million deficit. But the council trimmed the museum’s budget for the next fiscal year to $151,000, a $16,000 reduction compared to this year.

Voth said he does not know how the cuts will affect his three-member staff. “We’ll probably lose the secretary in January,” Voth said. “We just can’t function without a support staff. And I would be going from full time to three-quarters time.”

The public museum, located at 424 S. C St., is housed in a building funded and constructed by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in 1906. It was the first municipal building in Oxnard and served as the a library and, until 1949, the City Hall.

The museum has a permanent collection of 250 California paintings, and Voth brings in exhibits from local, regional and international artists. In the past year, for example, he showed works by Manuel Munoz Oliveras, the official artist of Mexico; Madeleine Rouart and Louis Labro-Font, two French Post-Impressionists; and famed movie star photographer George Hurrell.

The museum also provides tours and workshops in connection with county schools and art classes for adults and children.

But Voth sees rough times ahead for the small museum. In addition to the $16,000 lost in city budget cuts, Voth estimates that the museum lost about $25,000 in grants from four corporate donors who held back contributions out of fear that the museum was scheduled to close.

“That’s $25,000 out of the operating fund, which pays for exhibits we are supposed to be getting,” Voth said. He said that the museum will have to reduce the number of exhibits from a high of about 15 different shows to four or five next year.

The cuts, he said, “could possibly cut into our education program too. Because of the staff being so tiny, any time there’s a cut in money all projects have to be chopped. If we have 10 fewer exhibits we will have 10 fewer school programs.”

Voth said he hopes to “actively engage” in fund raising to make up the lost money. But he said he is concerned that his small staff, which includes himself, a full-time curator and two part-time support staff, is too small for an aggressive campaign to raise money.

Oxnard artist Linda Okatch Brown, past president of the Oxnard Art Assn., was encouraged by the museum director’s interest in looking for private donations. She said private fund raising was long overdue but now may have more success because the arts community was concerned about losing the museum and even had circulated a petition to save it.

“There is some support in this area, now that people are up in arms,” Brown said. She said the city’s budget cuts have forced the museum management “to really reach out, do more creative things.”

Voth said he was not at all surprised by this year’s loss of grant money. He still hopes to get financial support from Mervyn’s, Procter & Gamble, Nabisco and several local banks. With the news that the museum is to be spared, Voth said he will start applying for grants again. “We’ve lost three or four months in the budget process,” he said.

Although the council has saved the museum for the time being, future funding from the troubled city is still in question. Adding to the confusion is the new schedule of the museum, now open to the public Thursday through Sunday.

“If they cut funding and it’s closed all the time, people think, ‘Oh, it really is closed.’ It loses momentum,” Brown said. “I hardly go anymore. When it’s in limbo it doesn’t serve its purpose.”

Besides dealing with the financial problems, Voth tries to maintain a niche for the museum that will distinguish it from larger museums such as the Getty Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

“We take into account the ethnic makeup of the city, the age and the general interest to the public. It’s basically mainstream, not much cutting-edge or avant-garde,” Voth said. “That’s for the bigger museums. They are regional resources. We are a local resource.”

Kim Kanatani, the director of education at the Museum of Contemporary Art, sees a need for museums of all sizes.

“There is so much art to be seen and not enough venues for it to be presented in,” Kanatani said. “I would imagine that there are certain perspectives that Carnegie offers that MOCA doesn’t. So people have a choice.”