MUSEUM’S AIM: $40 MILLION FOR A HOME

With the recent approval of a fund-raising feasibility report, the Newport Harbor Art Museum board of trustees has formally begun a $40-million campaign to build and endow a larger home for the museum in Newport Beach.

The report showed “potentially strong support on a region-wide basis,” said board president Rogue Hemley, who is also the museum’s chief executive officer. “We feel it gives us a clear signal to go ahead.”

Hemley said the report on donor prospects by consultant Henry Goldstein, president of the New York-based Oram Group, was approved last week.

Despite increased fund drives by other arts groups, including the Orange County Performing Arts Center and major museums in Los Angeles, Hemley said: “We feel confident that our (fund) goals are reasonable and attainable.”

Under current projections, the museum seeks to raise $10.5 million by this fall. That amount in private donations is needed to assume title to a 10-acre Newport Center site now owned by the Irvine Co.

In February, the company announced it was offering the 10-acre site on a “challenge gift” basis, provided the museum raises $10.5 million in the first phase of an overall fund campaign. The vacant site is at Pacific Coast Highway and MacArthur Boulevard.

Altogether, the museum board hopes to raise about $20 million within five years to build a new structure of 65,000 to 100,000 square feet, Hemley said. In a separate drive, the museum seeks another $20 million within 10 years for an endowment to underwrite operating costs.

The museum is now on a two-acre, Irvine Co.-donated site in the west section of Newport Center. The structure is 23,000 square feet and cost $900,000 to build in 1977.

The architect for the new museum may be announced by November, said Hemley, who added that prospects have been narrowed to seven “active candidate” firms.