Southeast : Art Gallery Falls Victim to Corporate Shift

The Hippodrome Gallery in Long Beach is a small exhibition space, but it always tries to have a big community impact. It has, among other things, shed light on the culture of the city’s Southeast Asian community, fashioned artistic links with Pacific islands and celebrated one of the city’s most distinctive landmarks, the Queen Mary.

In 10 years, it had come to be one of the city’s cultural landmarks, city officials say.

Now comes word that FHP Health Care, the gallery’s sponsor, will close it. Both the Long Beach gallery, in the FHP building on Alamitos Avenue, and a similar gallery in Salt Lake City will go dark Aug. 31, saving the company $300,000 a year.

“It’s a decision we really regret, but it was something we had to do,” said spokeswoman Ria Carlson. The company, which recently merged with TakeCare Inc., has undergone a major restructuring and the board elected to focus limited resources on patient care, she said.

“Those programs not directly related to patient care became very vulnerable,” Carlson said.

But FHP founder Robert Gumbiner, who came up with the idea for a gallery in 1985, scoffs at the claim that the $3.2-billion-a-year company was making a decision based on economics.

“My personal opinion is that it’s a clash in philosophies between myself and the new chairman, Jack Anderson,” said Gumbiner, who resigned from the board this month. “It’s my feeling that any public company has an obligation not only to its shareholders but to its community.”

The 1,200-square-foot art space has housed 60 exhibitions, including the widely praised “Arts of Micronesia,” “Pinong Lao: Laotian Ethnic Harmony” and “Federal Art in Long Beach: A Heritage Rediscovered,” which focused on federal arts projects from the 1930s.

Gumbiner, who is active in philanthropic causes and who collects Latin American art, says he intends to replace the gallery with a museum of Latin American art and culture next year.