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City Board to Weigh Future Of Old Pasadena Art Museum

Restaurant, Asia Center Considered

By WANDA TUCKER
Staff Writer

Pasadena's Board of City Directors Tuesday will listen to three different viewpoints on what should be done with the Grace Nicholson Building at 46 N. Los Robles Ave., current home of the Pasadena Art Museum, when the new Art Museum at Carmelita Park is completed.
Scheduled for 11 a.m. in the Council Chamber at City Hall are presentations by a representative of the Art Museum, a spokesman for the Pacificulture Foundation and by Robert Kawashima.
The Art Museum representative, as Harold Jurgensen put it in an earlier letter to the city, will discuss "certain provisions as to the ultimate use of the property" which were outlined in the July, 1941, agreement between the city, California Graduate School of Design, Pasadena Art Institute (now the Art Museum), and The Carmelita Civic Grandstand Association.

Seeks New Lease

What the Art Museum seeks, City Manager John D. Phillips indicated in an October report, is reestablishing the provisions of the original lease, under which the property would be sold and the proceeds turned over to the Art Museum.
City Attorney Wendell Thompson has ruled, however, that the property now belongs solely to the city and there is no present legal obligation to abide by the old lease. Kawashima envisions a commercial usage for the authentic Chinese-styled building. He is the operator of a Japanese restaurant, the Miyako, which is now on South Los Robles Avenue. The old Art Museum, he believes, would make an ideal setting for such a restaurant.

Cultural Center

The third group seeking the use of the former Nicholson building is the Pacificulture Foundation, which is bolstering its request with a batch of letters endorsing the foundation's idea of retaining the old museum for an Asian art and cultural center.
According to a letter from Lennox Tierney, chairman of the Pasadena City College art department, Pacificulture is a non-profit foundation "capable of administering a proposed center for Asian research."
"Civic interest from the community at large," comments Tierney's plan comes from Mrs. Thyra Maxwell, who identifies herself as one of the executors of Miss Nicholson's estate and her friend

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MUSEUM: See Page B-10

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-Staff photo

FATE DEBATED––Different viewpoints on what will be done with the Grace Nicholson Building of the Pasadena Art Museum when the new museum of Carmelita Park is finished will be discussed by the city board of directors. Some ideas for its use include a possible oriental style restaurant or perhaps an Asian art and cultural center.