L.B. Museum of Art Gets Site at Convention Center

The Long Beach Museum of Art, which has occupied a historic seaside residence for 41 years, will get a new home in the city’s Convention and Entertainment Center.

Museum supporters plan to raise about $15 million for a new building, to be erected on land donated by the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency. The site donation, along with a gift of $450,000, was made by the agency in accordance with laws that require 1% of the Convention and Entertainment Center’s construction costs be spent on public art.

“I’m thrilled,” said museum director Harold Nelson. “We have a big challenge ahead of us, but it’s very exciting. We are putting together a really solid core of volunteers for a fund-raising campaign which we expect to accomplish in five to seven years.”

Nelson acknowledged that $15 million is a large sum, but expressed confidence that it can be raised in Long Beach. “The city believes in the museum and the important role it serves in the community,” he said.

The museum’s program features exhibitions of contemporary art and video. A large group of modern art works donated by Milton Wichner is the most valuable part of the permanent collection.

The announcement of the move, made on Thursday at the museum board’s annual meeting, ends years of discussion on how to gain much-needed space for the city’s 10,000-square-foot museum on Ocean Boulevard. Earlier plans to exchange the quaint brown bungalow for a facility in a sleek, downtown high-rise fell apart when the city decided not to fund the project.

The new site, on the edge of the center’s plaza, adjacent to the Terrace Theater and close to performing arts facilities, is ideal, Nelson said. “It is centrally located in the hotel and business community and accessible to the freeway.” In addition to providing for a six-fold expansion of exhibition and office space, the site will solve parking problems that have plagued the museum in recent years.

The old museum building, which was constructed around 1912, has been designated a historical landmark, and it will remain intact. Nelson said he hopes that the museum will continue to use the comfortable old two-story residence, carriage house and grounds for educational programs.