Art sale stuns museum officials

News of the sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings by the Orange County Museum of Art to a private collector has shocked Laguna art circles, including Laguna Art Museum officials.

OCMA acquired the paintings in agreements with the LAM after an aborted merger with Newport Harbor Museum in 1996, which led to the creation of the county museum. The pieces had been in LAM’s permanent collection, many of them painted and donated by early Laguna Beach artists.

The name of the buyer, reportedly a Laguna Beach resident, has not been disclosed.

“We haven’t a clue who bought them,” LAM Director Bolton Colburn said.

But he said he’d sure like to sit down with the owner to see if he, she or them would donate, sell or lend the OCMA pieces to LAM.

“It would be nice if the owner came forward,” Colburn said. “We’d like to know who it is. But we are not going to be calling around asking ‘Is it you? Is it you?’”

If the owner came out of the closet, Colburn’s first move would be to ask that the pieces be donated to the museum.

“That would make the owner a big hero in Laguna,” Colburn said. “Laguna owned all of the pieces pre-merger.”

If an outright gift is out of the question, Bolton is prepared to make an offer.

“We would try diligently to raise the funds for the museum to pay the owner what they paid — reportedly paid,” Colburn said. News reports have stated that $963,000 was paid for all 18 paintings, a paltry amount considering most experts say at least one of the works is worth more than that sum alone.

LAM was not made privy to the information that the OCMA pieces were on the block — let alone the asking price or how that was determined.

“The whole thing was odd,” Colburn said.

However, Irvine writer Liz Goldner, who covers the Laguna Beach art scene, said she thought the sale was in the best interests of OCMA and the art.

“It’s great that they sold off pieces they haven’t shown much that now will be shown,” Goldner said.

Some of them are currently being shown at the Nevada Art Museum in Reno, Goldner said.

Former Arts Commissioner and founder of the Laguna Beach Concert Band Carol Reynolds doesn’t agree with Goldner.

“The news of the sale made me sick,” Reynolds said.

[Editor’s Note: For more local reaction to the art sale, see Our Laguna on Page A5.]