MUSEUM DISMISSES ITS CHIEF CURATOR

Robert McDonald, who had served as the Laguna Beach Museum of Art’s chief curator for 11 months, has been dismissed from that post as a “budget saving” move, museum officials said this week. The dismissal took effect June 1.

Officials said the museum, which soon will start construction on a $850,000 expansion-renovation of the museum’s main site in Laguna Beach, is faced with major “fiscal constraints and reevaluations.”

In a phone interview, McDonald, 52, said: “It (dismissal) was something of a surprise. It’s my understanding that the board and Bill Otton (museum director) felt it was too much of a (fiscal) burden at this time to have a chief curator. So they decided to eliminate the post.”