With new directors on the job, things are starting to look a little more promising at two Napa Valley arts institutions that, many observers had believed, were preparing to circle the bowl.
It’s no secret that COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, has fallen on lean times since its ballyhooed opening in 2001. Over the past year or so, the nonprofit museum/cooking school/wine shrine has shed personnel, sold land and dropped its admission fees until it seemed the primary mission was simply to keep the doors open. It’s been a sad comedown for a proud establishment that aimed to put downtown Napa on the world wine map. But new leadership and an astonishing new art show may be indications that those rumors of COPIA’s demise were premature.
Conceived by the late Robert Mondavi, who contributed the land and $20 million to help build this 80,000-square-foot temple of fine living, COPIA (www.copia.org) was funded by a mix of private contributions and bond offerings, and initially charged $12.50 for admission to its gardens, galleries, restaurants and shops. “They went straight for the tourists,” says one longtime Napan, echoing the complaints of many locals who viewed COPIA as an overpriced monument to the wine industry.
Though hundreds of Napa Valley residents have signed up as COPIA members and enlisted as volunteers over the years, thousands more stayed away—and tourists didn’t show up in anything like the numbers COPIA consultants had projected. You can read the dismal details online in a July 20, 2008, investigative report and a July 26, 2008, editorial, both in the Sacramento Bee (www.sacbee.com): Instead of a half-million visitors a year by 1996, COPIA never drew more than about 146,000. Instead of repaying its debt, the center bled zeroes that added up to some $44 million by last year.
It gets worse: The Internal Revenue Service audited COPIA and found the center was using some of its tax-exempt museum space for money-making retail and restaurant operations that were supposed to be limited to 5 percent of the total area. According to the Bee investigation, which used California’s Public Records Act to obtain 3,000 pages of bond documents and financial reports from the troubled, state-owned bank that issued the COPIA bonds, the center had to sell off some land to pay the $225,000 IRS fine and hang on to its tax-exempt status.
And, of course, layoffs affected every layer of employment—from gardeners and publicists to CEO Kurt Nystrom and, ultimately, President Arthur Jacobus. Jacobus got his walking papers this March, when former COPIA board chairman Garry K. McGuire, Jr., took over as the center’s top executive. McGuire wisely did away with the general admission fee, which had dwindled to $5 as the center’s fortunes declined. He also held on to some of the center’s core arts personnel, namely concert and film presenter Richard Miami and director of exhibitions Neil Harvey, both of whom have been with COPIA since the beginning.
But the last thing anyone expected was for McGuire to bring gallery art back to COPIA—even less that he would green-light an ambitious 50-year retrospective by Ira Yeager, the celebrated Bay Area painter and sculptor whose Calistoga studio stands not far from McGuire’s home. The artist and COPIA supporter befriended the executive as McGuire mowed his lawn; the result is an astonishing one-man show, curated by Harvey, of works that Yeager has kept to himself for up to half a century. Only two paintings, out of the entire gallery’s worth, have ever been exhibited in public—and it’s about time they were.
The COPIA show ($7/$4 children and seniors) will remain on display through November 10. Not only is it a must-not-miss for lovers of art and whimsy, the Yeager retrospective could also signal the beginning of a much-needed turnaround for COPIA. Drop by (600 First Street, next to the closed bridge; you’ll need to approach from the west) and see what you think.
Another nonprofit that’s been the object of an informal deathwatch over the past year is the Napa Valley Museum, on the grounds of the Veterans Home of California in Yountville. After longtime director Eric Nelson left in November 2007, to helm the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, the next two top executives both fell seriously ill in succession and went on medical leave. Curator Jennifer Garden—whose Monticello exhibition was one of the museum’s few triumphs this year—has also left, while turmoil and turnover among trustees left a board of only six members by this summer.
Small wonder the museum’s head-hunting firm couldn’t turn up a new director. Instead, a Salinas high-school teacher, art critic and former curator named Rick Deragon took over in June. With a staff of just four and a dedicated corps of volunteers, he’s already begun to shake up the museum, with monthly exhibitions replacing the old quarterly schedule and parties with live music and dancing. Down the road, he’d like to add a patio café, and he’s determined to reinvigorate the stodgy “Napa Valley history” displays that have anchored the museum for the past decade.
It may strike you odd, but a high school teacher may be exactly what the Napa Valley Museum needs to attract the rising generation—and Deragon is off to a good start: The opening reception for his recent “Manga and Anime” show, presented with Japantown’s Nichi Bei Times newsweekly, featured taiko drumming and a wall-sized area where visitors could sketch their own manga (Japanese-style cartoon) drawings. As I watched a throng of tweens, teens and twentysomethings creating colorful, original characters on the paper, I realized I’d never seen so many young people at a museum function anywhere in Napa County. If Deragon can keep this up, the Napa Valley Museum (www.napavalleymuseum.org) may be in for some lively times ahead.
