Newport Trustees Want Changes in Museum Accord

IRVINE —  Newport Harbor Art Museum trustees on Saturday reaffirmed their commitment to merge with Laguna Art Museum but stopped short of endorsing a plan that would keep the Laguna building open as a branch of the merged facility.

Newport museum trustees will seek unspecified modifications to an agreement between Laguna museum trustees and Save Laguna Art Museum, or SLAM, a group opposed to the merger. That plan’s key point would keep the Laguna Art Museum building open as a semiautonomous facility supervised by the merged museums.

Merger proponents envision a more economical yet higher profile institution, to be known as the Orange County Museum of Art, which could attract major nationally touring exhibitions by famous artists. Without consolidation, the Laguna museum risks insolvency, they say.

Newport Harbor and Laguna trustees previously had voted to merge, but they must vote again because the compromise agreement would alter the bylaws recently established for the merged institution.

Newport museum President James V. Selna declined to detail the board’s concerns with the 18-page compromise agreement. But he said board members planned to begin discussions Saturday afternoon with Laguna museum and SLAM representatives. The Newport museum’s board is scheduled to consider the issue again April 18, though that date could be moved up.

Laguna trustee C. Thomas Nulty said Saturday that he sympathized with the Newport museum’s decision. It probably would not jeopardize the merger, he said, even though its trustees’ next meeting comes only two days before the deadline for Laguna museum’s 1,400 members to ratify the merger.

“I still think the merger is the right thing to do,” Nulty said, “and that somehow all these well-minded people on all three sides are going to figure out the right way to make it happen. It just might take a little more work and time.”

Newport trustee Charles D. Martin, president-elect of the merged museum, said Saturday that the merger could be approved at the April 18 meeting “if we have worked out these issues satisfactorily. [But] we want to make sure the issues of Newport Harbor trustees are factored into the solution being crafted by all parties.”

SLAM President G. Ray Kerciu declined to comment until meeting with Newport museum trustees, but said Saturday he was “most anxious to see and hear from them and to try to work with them.”

SLAM, a group of Laguna Beach residents, Laguna museum members and local art lovers concerned that the merger would close the museum, voted 227 to 151 Friday night to sign the compromise agreement that was negotiated with Laguna museum trustees.

The compromise agreement is expected to be signed early this week by Laguna museum trustees and SLAM’s members. In addition to keeping the Laguna museum open under its current name, it requires SLAM to drop its opposition.

It also will require a nonprofit corporation, largely consisting of local residents, to raise two-thirds of the Laguna museum’s annual budget, projected initially at about $400,000.

“We’re now going to move away from a fighting stance,” Kerciu said Saturday, “and put our energy into fund-raising and pulling the community together.”

Some SLAM members remain steadfastly against the merger and say they’ll carry on the fight, even if it means quitting SLAM. “Art, like nature, thrives on diversity,” said Laguna gallery owner and artist Mark Chamberlain, “and that’s what’s likely to suffer. I’m going to continue to work against this.”