At a town hall meeting Sept. 18 at the Hillcrest Center for the Arts in Thousand Oaks, proponents of a new regional art museum unveiled its name: The California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks.

The website dedicated to the new museum, regionalartmuseum.org, claims that it will, “provide a world-class cultural experience for visitors and locals alike… Artists, educators, lovers of art, tourists, students and the general public, will appreciate the world-class exhibitions of paintings, sculpture, photography, music, drama and dance.”

Marcy Goodwin, a Pasadena consultant who has worked on over 80 art museums across the country, was hired to help plan and create the venue.

“Our vision is to exhibit the best examples of fine and design arts, to offer educational art programs to all ages and to present national and international traveling exhibitions,” said Goodwin.

“[The museum] is needed because there are no other fine and design art museums within a one-hour drive time,” Goodwin said. “Students in local schools are underserved in the arts. We found out that possibly the greatest need is to offer art education and art programs within the museum context.”

The meeting was told that the projected cost for the museum is around $3 million.

With such a wide spectrum of visual arts, hopefully the new museum will draw a large crowd, which will in turn generate more revenue for the city of Thousand Oaks.

The museum’s new home will be located across Dallas Drive on the 2.5-acre site near city hall. Initially, the museum will be about 30,000 square feet, possibly expanding to 200,000 over several more years.

However, not everyone is excited about the new museum. One CLU student, Luke Gheta, said, “Creating a new museum would be a waste of money, especially in the city of Thousand Oaks. Who would go out of their way to come out here to visit a ‘world-class’ museum?”

Others were excited to hear about the upcoming project.

“I’m looking forward to it. There’s not much to do out here and a new museum would be really cool, especially if there’s a student discount,” said Jon Barton, another CLU student.

Many steps still need to be taken in order for this project to become a reality, including submitting plans for the project to the city.

Trevor McCabe
Special to The Echo
Published Oct. 17, 2012