O.C. museums get Warhol works

David Cassidy has arrived at the Laguna Art Museum, and he sometimes looks happy to be there.

Six photographs of the pop star and “Partridge Family” veteran — courtesy of an artist who became famous for capturing the same face over and over — now occupy a small red book in the museum’s offices. In some of the images, which date from 1975, Cassidy smiles, but he sticks out his tongue in one and scowls in another as though he just sucked a lemon.

Still, the handwritten inscription on the last picture, which Cassidy dedicated to “A.W.,” marks the book’s cultural significance. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts announced Monday that it had wrapped up an international giveaway of the artist’s work, and the Laguna Beach museum was among the recipients.

“Because they’re Polaroids, it means that they’re unique,” Malcolm Warner, the museum’s executive director, said Wednesday with the red book open in front of him. “So there is something very special. You know, they’re not reproducible, like from a negative or some such. So they do have the aura of being, like, the one record of an encounter between the artist and this celebrity.”

The Laguna museum was one of two Orange County venues to receive Warhol works in the foundation’s most recent donation round. The Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach also received a collection of 14 photos, dating from 1972, that feature Warhol as well as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Stevie Wonder and other luminaries.

Chief curator Dan Cameron said the museum has other Warhol works in its permanent collection, with some of them appearing in the exhibit “The Avant-Garde Collection” last fall. The recent delivery, though, marks the first Warhol photos in OCMA’s stash.

“He was an obsessive picture-taker, as I’m sure everyone knows,” Cameron said. “And very often he would keep taking them all day long and pop them in a box.”

Warhol, who died in 1987, was a pop art icon and became famous for his images of Campbell’s Soup cans, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and other cultural staples. His most famous creation, however, may be an adage that not all users know to attribute to him — the notion that everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

Since Warhol’s death, the New York-based foundation has donated approximately 52,000 of his works, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The last round encompassed 14,847 pieces donated over the past two years.

Nina Djerejian, executive assistant to the president of the Warhol Foundation, said the Laguna and Newport museums made the list because their directors were members of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum and Hammer Museum were among the other Southern California locations on the list.

According to Warner, the foundation originally offered his museum a different photo book, but he asked for one with a California-related subject instead. Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge on the popular 1970s musical sitcom, sufficed as a Los Angeles resident, and the museum received the photos last January.

Warner and Cameron said they haven’t finalized plans to exhibit the new Warhol works.

“We have many more works of art in the collection than we can put on show all the time,” Warner said. “So we hold things back for the right moment, and I’m sure the right moment for this will come along.”