Pasadena's new home for art - Front Page - Pasadena Museum of California Art - Brief Article

Art in America, April, 2002 by Stephanie Cash

A new museum devoted to the art, architecture and design of California, from 1850 to the present, is set to open on June 1. Founded by collectors and local residents Robert and Arlene Oltman, the Pasadena Museum of California Art is housed in a new $5-million plaster-and-limestone building, designed by MDA Johnson Favaro Architecture and Urban Design. The structure contains 30,000 square feet on three levels. Some 8,000 square feet of gallery space, along with a bookstore and community room, are located on the second floor, with a 10,000-squarefoot parking garage on the first level. Future plans call for part of the first floor to be converted into gallery space for large-scale works. The third floor houses a roof terrace and a 5,000-square-foot private residence for the Oltmans.

The PMCA has nonprofit status and will be governed by a board of trustees, which is still being formed at this writing. Wesley Jessup was named executive director in December 2000. He formerly served as assistant director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, and manager of budgeting and planning for international programs at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The Oltmans are providing operating funds for the next five years, giving the board time to build an endowment, mostly through corporate and foundation fund-raising.

The building is owned by a corporation that is controlled by the Oltmans. Both the Oltmans and the museum will pay rent to this corporation, which will pay the property taxes. If the PMCA is financially stable after five years, the couple will donate the first two floors to the museum, which will then qualify for tax exemption. The third floor will be turned over to the museum upon the Oltmans' deaths.

To launch the museum's collection, the Oltmans are donating part of their personal collection, which focuses on late 19th- and early 20th-century works by such artists as Albert Bierstadt, Elmer Wachtell, Conrad Buff, Edgar Payne and Alson a Clark, but also includes recent work by artists like Bay Area figurative painter Raimonds Staprans. Jessup says that the museum will add mid-century and contemporary works as it builds its collection. One board member has already promised to donate an inflatable sculpture by L.A.-based artist Carlos Mollura.

Initially, the museum's gallery space will be used for temporary exhibitions; later, works from the collection will be shown on a rotating basis. The PMCA will inaugurate its galleries with "On-Ramps: Transitional Moments in California Art," on view through Sept. 1. The show of approximately 100 works is co-curated by Michael Duncan, Peter Frank, Nancy Moure and Thomas Solomon, who each focus on a specific period from the last century. Subsequent exhibitions will include a show of California photography, organized by the Oakland Museum of California [Sept. 14-Nov. 24]; cathedral designs for Oakland, Los Angeles and Garden Grove by, respectively, Santiago Calatrava, Raphael Moneo and Richard Meier [December 2002-February 2003]; and the California Design Biennial [March-June 2003].