New Museum Will Celebrate California Art

Five years after art collectors Robert and Arlene Oltman purchased a piece of property in downtown Pasadena with the vague idea of building a residence for themselves in a mixed-use facility, their dream is becoming a reality. But they won’t be living above a boutique or restaurant, like a growing number of urban dwellers. Instead, they are moving into the top floor of a three-story building that houses the new Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Dedicated to California art, architecture and design from 1850 to the present, the $5-million museum will open June 1 with “On-Ramps: Transitional Moments in California Art,” a four-part exhibition of definitive developments in California art history. Visitors will park on the ground level, ascend to the second-floor deck and proceed to the galleries, then check out the view from the rooftop terrace. Located at 490 E. Union St., just around the corner from the Pacific Asia Museum, the building is the work of MDA Johnson Favaro Architecture and Urban Design of Culver City.

Unusual as it is, the Oltmans’ project has won the support of city leaders. “It adds to Pasadena’s standing as a center for arts and culture, while making a unique contribution,” said Mayor Bill Bogaard. The museum’s artistic mission is particularly appropriate because it deals with “a period of California art that is very much a part of Pasadena’s past,” he said.

Robert Oltman, 63, and Arlene, 62, are longtime residents of Pasadena. “Some people have said we are giving something back to the community,” said Robert, who practiced architecture for 17 years before co-founding his profitable business, Space Bank Mini Storage, with partner Clayton H. Schubert. “We may be. But our real focus is making people more aware of the arts movements that have taken place here and the serious experimentation that is still going on today.”

Wesley Jessup, an art historian and former assistant director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who is executive director of the new museum, has lined up an ambitious exhibitions program by hiring guest curators and booking traveling shows. “On-Ramps,” which runs through Sept. 1, is an in-house creation compiled by four independent curators.

The “Impressionism to Post-Impressionism” section was organized by Nancy Moure, a specialist in early California art; “Post Surrealism,” by Michael Duncan, a critic for Art in America magazine; “Hard Edge Abstraction to Finish Fetish,” by Peter Frank, a critic for L.A. Weekly; and “Bay Area Conceptualism,” by Thomas Solomon, a former Los Angeles gallery owner. The artworks have been borrowed from museums across the country, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona.

The second show, “Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850-2002” (Sept. 14 to Nov. 24), was organized by the Oakland Museum. Next year will bring three home-grown exhibitions: “Towards a New Cathedral: Calatrava, Meier, Moneo,” focusing on three architectural projects; “California Design Biennial”; and “Edward Biberman: A Retrospective.” Another 2003 show, “Not-So Still Life: A Century of California Painting and Sculpture,” will come from the San Jose Museum of Art.

“We have a great breadth of material to work with,” Jessup said. While some exhibitions will probe particular styles or periods, others will “create a dialogue between the old and the new,” he said. “There is such a divide. Aficionados of plein-air or Impressionist painting have difficulty appreciating contemporary art, and it’s hard for lovers of contemporary to get into Impressionism. I hope that ‘On-Ramps’ and shows that look at one genre over the course of a century will cultivate an audience with a broad appreciation of California art.”

Critical and public response to the fledgling museum remains to be seen, but some of Jessup’s peers have already expressed approval.

“I’m impressed with the curators they’ve gotten involved and I think very highly of the architects,” said Jay Belloli, director of art programs at the nearby Armory Center for the Arts. “This city is not very good about knowing its own artistic history. Anything that helps that along is certainly worth doing.”

Gloria Williams, a curator at the Norton Simon Museum, said the new museum is “only going to be good for the city.” Along with its artistic point of view, the museum will provide an occasional showcase for works in other institutions’ collections that are often in storage, she said. For starters, the Simon has loaned four pieces of contemporary art to the opening show. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to present these works in a different circumstance,” Williams said.

The Oltmans’ project has taken the Southern California art community by surprise, partly because they have not been high-profile collectors. Modest and soft-spoken, they discuss the evolution of their museum as if it were just another stage in their long life together, but they acknowledge that it has grown far beyond their initial impulse to live in downtown Pasadena.

The property on North Union Street is in a commercial zone in the historic Pasadena Playhouse district, where mixed use is encouraged. Any residence built there had to be attached to a commercial or nonprofit venture. The question was what that enterprise would be, Arlene Oltman said. But the answer came fairly quickly. “Bob loves art; I love art,” she said. “We decided that a museum would be an interesting thing to explore.”

In 30 years of collecting they have accumulated about 300 paintings, including works by 18th century Europeans, 19th century Americans and California plein-air artists. They also have hosted weekend exhibitions of contemporary art at their home.

But they had a lot to learn about art museums. One major revelation was that to operate a nonprofit, tax-exempt museum, they couldn’t simply display their own collection all the time, as planned. They would have to present an educational exhibition program for the public.

Looking for a way to meet tax law requirements while filling a niche that would satisfy their own interest in art, they discovered “a gap,” Robert Oltman said. “We found a need for a museum that truly dedicated itself to the California arts historically to the present time.”

Then they ran national ads for an executive director and hired Jessup, a 32-year-old native of Alaska who was educated in art history at Cal State Fullerton and the City University of New York. He started his career in 1994 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, where he organized traveling shows. In 1998 he went to work for the Spencer Museum of Art.

Jessup, who has been on the job since December 2000 and is one of only four full-time employees, said he was attracted to the museum because “there is nothing else like it.” Another selling point: “L.A. is still very much in the process of becoming something, as opposed to New York, which has already become what it is going to be,” he said.

The Pasadena museum is also a work in process. The collection will not be on public view for a while, but the Oltmans plan to develop it over time, in keeping with the museum’s mission. Both the collection and the building, which they own through a nonprofit corporation, will be bequeathed to the museum.

As for finances, the museum has an annual operating budget of about $500,000 and no endowment. Although the Oltmans have put a big chunk of their own money into realizing their dream, they hope to build financial support from other sources through memberships, bookstore sales, contributions and rental of the rooftop terrace for special events.

“The game plan is to get the community involved--throughout Southern California, not just Pasadena,” Robert Oltman said.

The museum will open with 8,000 square feet of exhibition space, but that is expected to grow as well. Architects Steve Johnson and Jim Favaro designed the 30,000-square-foot building with 10,000 square feet of parking on the first floor, as required by the city. But the cavernous garage may be converted into galleries when exterior parking becomes available. The Oltmans’ 5,000-square-foot living space is also a temporary arrangement.

“We gave the architects a difficult problem,” Robert Oltman said. “We wanted an architectural icon, a museum with maximum flexibility and a residence. Finally, the idea is that when Arlene and I pass on, or we get tired of living in downtown Pasadena with car alarms and all of that, the top floor will become part of the museum as well. The building is laid out to meet our needs and the future needs of the museum. The architects did a fantastic job.”