Offended by Newport Museum Column

As president of the board of the Newport Harbor Art Museum and as a longtime resident of Orange County, I take extreme offense at Cathy Curtis’ article “A Time to Tolerate the Intolerant?” (Nov. 16)

For the record, the museum did not start the controversy. The museum only got involved after the Daily Pilot ran a front-page story on Councilman John W. Hedges’ comments to the Newport Beach City Council and invited readers to respond on their hot line. The issues of withdrawing funds from the museum and the urge to censor unpopular art are not inconsequential in this or any other community. The museum then responded with its own viewpoint in an open and effective a way as possible. Curtis’ insistence that we should have quietly ignored it is utter nonsense.

For her to suggest that the people of Orange County are “looky-loos” who will only come to the museum to satisfy their prurient curiosity, and to assume that many of the county’s residents share Hedges’ bigotry, is to do the county a great disservice.

The museum’s exhibitions may not please Curtis, but the museum has not retreated one iota from its aggressive contemporary agenda. To criticize it because of its efforts to draw in members of its immediate community is disrespectful of the community and uncomprehending of the mission and purpose of a contemporary art museum. It is a continuation of the long-discredited notion of art being only for the anointed.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum is too important an institution to Orange County, Southern California and the national art scene to be faulted for trying to make its local community aware of its exhibitions and programs. The more than 2 million people of Orange County are too significant as individuals and as citizens of a growing, dynamic megalopolis to be dismissed as “some local people” who are too suburban to understand issues of public funding for the arts, freedom of expression, and the importance of a thriving cultural climate for themselves and their children. To have done so is an arrogant generalization that is unacceptable in The Times or any other newspaper.

We have no “better things to do” than to stand up for the very principles upon which the Newport Harbor Art Museum was founded.

JOAN BEALL

Newport Beach