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| LUCKMAN GALLERY AT CAL STATE L.A. Los Angeles, CA - The Luckman Gallery at the Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex at California State University, Los Angeles, has been named as one of 29 arts institutions in the United States and abroad to receive gifts of contemporary artwork from the well-known collection of Peter and Eileen Norton. The Nortons are donating nearly 1,000 artworks, with a total estimated value of more than $2 million, to institutions including The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Tate Gallery in London. Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Gallery in Los Angeles and California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in Santa Clarita are the only Los Angeles County universities included in this donation. The Nortons are donating the works, organized in thematic packages, in the hope of strengthening the presence of contemporary art and disseminating its adventuresome spirit throughout the United States. Most of the gifts are going to college and university art galleries and to institutions outside the biggest cities, bringing the works of challenging younger artists to the attention of a broader public and building the collections of the most active and vibrant of America's smaller museums. "This is the first gift of this kind and of this magnitude for the Luckman Complex, which is in the midst of its sixth season," said Luckman Gallery Director Julie Joyce. "We're thrilled by the Nortons' invaluable gesture, which not only helps us to establish a collection of depth and prominence, but is also a wonderful vote of confidence for the Luckman Gallery, the University, and the community." The Luckman plans to celebrate the Nortons' gift with an exhibition, to take place within the 2000-2001 season. The Nortons began to assemble their art collection in the 1980s, concentrating on new works that embodied socially meaningful ideas in visually exciting forms. The couple stepped up their collecting in 1990, the year Mr. Norton merged his company, Peter Norton Computing Inc., with Symantec Corp. Since then, the Nortons have consistently been included on the ArtNews list of the world's 200 top collectors. Through the present donation, the Nortons are giving away some 40 percent of their existing collection. The donation follows upon a decade of similar initiatives by Eileen and Peter Norton. Among the couple's best-known philanthropies in the arts has been the Curator's Grant Program, initiated in 1990. Each year, the Nortons provide discretionary funds to two or three contemporary art curators of exceptional merit, so the curators can purchase works of art for their institutions. In this way, the Nortons have rewarded and encouraged fresh thinking by curators, developed a nationwide community among curators, built the collections of museums, and provided much-needed sales to artists. Independent curator Thomas Solomon surveyed some 200 institutions throughout the United States on behalf of the Nortons in order to propose a list of smaller museums and university art galleries that might benefit from the donation. The Nortons hope their gifts will inspire others to be inventive in supporting these museums. "Even the biggest museums have very limited funds for the purchase of contemporary art," Peter Norton explains. "The many smaller art museums and arts centers are even shorter on acquisition funds. So we thought the most interesting and beneficial thing we could do was to create mini-collections that would be organized in some meaningful way-by region, for example, or by subject matter-and donate them to lean but admirable arts institutions across the country: the university galleries and museums in smaller cities that have shown spunk and interest in this realm." "Our purpose," Mr. Norton continues, "is to respond to the rise of cultural excellence across the United States. Virtually every regional capital, from Miami to Seattle, now has some cultural facility that exhibits contemporary art and collects it to the extent it can. That's an important phenomenon-but it's gone unheralded. So, as much as we honor world leaders such as MoMA and the Tate, we feel that's not enough. To do our part for the values of experimental art, we also want to help strengthen these important smaller institutions all around the country." To encourage inventiveness in building museum collections, the Nortons have organized the donation in packages, suiting each group of works to the needs and curatorial direction of the museum receiving the gift. Rather than group the works in conventional categories-by style or period, for example-the Nortons have preferred to package the gifts by themes. The Luckman Gallery has received a package titled Conceptual Sculpture, which contains works by artists known on international and national levels, including Terry Allen, Rebecca Horn, Louise Lawler, Donald Lipski, Wade Saunders, and Joel Otterson. The great majority of the pieces in the Norton donation were made in the 1990s and are the work of younger artists. Among the 35 artworks donated to the Luckman Gallery are an untitled bronze by Antoni Gaudi, as well as significant works by Los Angeles artists including Fred Fehlau and Linda Hudson (Roush). (For a complete list of artworks, please call the Cal State L.A. Public Affairs Office at 323-343-3050.) California regional museums receiving gifts through the Norton donation include the Laguna Art Museum (Laguna Beach), Oakland Museum of California, Orange County Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art. The donation also expresses the Nortons' ongoing concern with education. (Among his other activities, Peter Norton serves as a trustee of Reed College and CalArts.) In addition to the Luckman Gallery, ten other teaching institutions are receiving gifts: The Art Museum, Princeton University; CalArts; the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee; Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle; Johnson County Community College Gallery of Art, Overland Park, Kansas; Los Angeles Children's Museum; University Art Museum, Santa Barbara; University of California Berkeley Art Museum; and Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "We are interested in museums that are in a process of growth or evolution," Peter Norton explains. "We felt a well-conceived donation could give a boost to a program that was under way. We also felt the donation could encourage the community to support the museum and become involved in it. When someone from outside steps in with a gift, it says to the community, 'You have a worthwhile institution in your midst.'" "At the same time," Mr. Norton continues, "this donation says, 'These artworks deserve to be exhibited and discussed.' Even if they haven't been certified as art-historical, even if the market hasn't stamped them with a dollar value, these artworks have meaning and legitimacy in their own right. By placing them within thematic contexts, and by giving them to museums where we know they'll be appreciated, we help put these works into the public discourse. And that's where the ideas and spirit of contemporary art belong."
NOTE: Slides are available upon request. Call Julie Joyce at (323) 343 6608. Media contacts: Carol Selkin, Public Information Director or, about the donation as a whole:
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