Look Out LAX, John Wayne Airport’s Getting Gussied Up and Arty to Boot

As much as Orange County has grown and matured in the last decade, we still take a lot of second-class-citizen guff from Los Angeles.

We were nearly 35 years behind L.A. in luring a National Football League franchise, close to 10 years behind in getting our own major-league baseball team and 20 years behind in building our Performing Arts Center.

But soon another cultural gap will close and our snooty neighbors to the north will have one less thing to wag their haughty fingers at.

Yes, in less than a year we will have art in our airport too. A program here is slated to get off the ground, as it were, only about a month after Los Angeles International Airport launches a similar program for raising the cultural standards of the wild-blue-yonder-bound public.

It couldn’t be more comforting to know that come April, when the much-delayed $310-million expansion of the John Wayne Airport terminal is scheduled to be completed, it won’t just be a more comfortable, more efficient portal for entering and exiting Orange County.

If things go the way the county Board of Supervisors plan, it should be a work of art--and we’re not just talking about the sparkling new architecture taking shape next to the San Diego Freeway. The supes, see, have appointed the John Wayne Airport Arts Task Force, and last week the panelists gave their first recommendations on what kind of real, live art they hope to use to class up the place.

Keep in mind this is still in very preliminary form and well might change by the end of the month when the task force settles on its final recommendations, but here’s where it’s heading: “Based on overwhelming feedback from the public (gathered from a) survey taken of people using the airport and arts organizations throughout Orange County,” proposals include visual art exhibitions that would change regularly, musical presentations and other performing arts, task force chairman Harvey Stearn said recently. They are even planning to hire a curator and to establish a permanent collection.

Now, I know there’s been a glaring oversight in our county’s fiscal priorities, apparent in a $2.9-billion county budget for 1989-90 that earmarks no money for arts support. The County of Los Angeles, in contrast, has set aside $35 million to support a variety of art projects this year.

And I realize that times must have been tough when the Board of Supervisors couldn’t find a penny to finance its own Orange County Arts Alliance, leaving it to die last winter.

Yes, the county’s woeful record on arts has been in desperate need of some kind of improvement.

But the airport?

I just wish I’d been at the supes meeting last year when the light bulb went on over someone’s head and he or she leaped up:

“I’ve got it--let’s put art in the airport!!!”

Whenever someone complains that Orange County isn’t doing enough for the arts, we can just hustle ‘em over to a post-Impressionism show at Gate 23A and say, “Oh yeah?”

And whenever visitors arrive from New York, they are sure to be wowed by our collective sophistication and artistic acumen as evidenced in, say, some Greek statuary in the hallway across from the Hertz booth.

In fact, since they’ve already got that bronze statue of the Duke on the sidewalk there now, maybe they can commission a whole series of sculptures of famous O.C. arts types: Gene Autry, Chuck Norris, Dick Dale, Joey Bishop. . . .

Actually, no one knows just yet what or where any of this art is going to be. But the important thing is that it is going to be there at all.

It stands to be particularly welcomed by those folks who use the airport regularly, such as business fliers, cabbies--and county supervisors. Equally important, though, come next summer, Joe and Jane Orange County will have one more opportunity for cultural enrichment: “Honey--I’m discovering that the substantive vacuity of network television, cable and even the videos we’ve been renting is increasingly leaving my intellect bereft of stimulation and fulfillment. Whaddya say we hop in the Merc and go check out some art at the airport?”

The biggest problem I envision is with parking. Not in finding a space, as that’s what a good deal of all the bulldozing is about. But it’s not only going to be an intellectual challenge studying that Deconstructionist exhibit, it’s going to be darn inconvenient--not to mention expensive--running out every 20 minutes to put another quarter in the meter.

I would also hope they don’t get too adventurous with their performing arts offerings, because I could see it creating undue confusion for travelers. What if that skycap you just slapped with a generous tip turns out to be Chris Burden doing a performance art piece on skycaps?

All in all, though, as much as I’m a fan of art and fine music, I’m not sure that the airport is a great place for it. Personally, I’d be a little nervous about going to baggage claim to find my luggage and having to wonder whether it’s really my luggage or just a brilliant photo-realist portrait of my luggage.

And besides, would you hop on board that commuter flight as scheduled if there was a soprano next to the metal detector doing Strauss’ “Four Last Songs”?

DR, Steve Lopez