Orange County museum under fire for selling paintings to private collector

The Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach has quietly sold 18 of its 20 California Impressionist paintings to an undisclosed private collector, sparking criticism from two local museum directors who say the secrecy violated the public interest by preventing them from bidding to keep the works in collections open to the public.

The Times learned of the sale after a reader’s tip on Culture Monster. Reached Friday in Zurich, Switzerland, OCMA director Dennis Szakacs said the paintings from the early 1900s fetched a total of $963,000 in late March from a Laguna Beach collector whose identity the museum promised not to disclose. Szakacs defended the transaction.

 “We were exchanging a high level of transparency available in an auction for the desirability of keeping these paintings with a local collector,” he said.

Read the rest of the story at Culture Monster, The Times' arts blog.

-- Mike Boehm

William Wendt's "Spring in the Canyon"