ART : World Adventurer Keller Ready to Settle In at Bowers Museum : Globe-trotting geologist, who’s made a specialty of studying primitive people, outlines his plans and goals as director of the Santa Ana institution.

Do the Dewars people need any more candidates for their magazine ad profiles? Peter C. Keller, the new director of the Bowers Museum, just might fit the bill.

Apologizing last week for being somewhat jet-lagged, the trim 43-year-old former associate director for public programs at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County explained that he had just returned from New Guinea, where he was examining gem deposits--his specialty--and snapping hundreds of black-and-white photographs of a Stone Age tribe.

“Since I was a child I was very interested in mineralogy and archeology and anthropology,” Keller said. When it came time to go to college and choose a major, he “almost literally flipped a coin. . . . I decided geology would be the way to go for a very practical reason: I didn’t think I’d ever get a job in anthropology or archeology. But I always maintained them as a hobby.”

Keller earned a Ph.D in geology from the University of Texas at Austin and has served the Natural History Museum in various capacities--including curator and trustee--since 1976. A veteran of 22 trips to Colombia to study emerald deposits, as well as assorted sorties to China, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma, he had been planning to spend the summer in Nairobi to finish a book on East African gems. But the museum board decided that he was needed by May 1 instead of September. (No sweat. He finished the book in his Corona del Mar ocean-view home.)

“I like to spend as much time as possible in strange, out-of-the-way places where most of these gem deposits are,” Keller said. “There’s an ulterior motive--working with and observing the primitive peoples of the world. I thrive on that. I’m fascinated by their material culture.”

Keller’s temporary office is just a parking lot away from the noise and dust of the Bowers’ $12-million renovation and expansion project, due to be completed by the end of the year. Long viewed by many as a sleepy institution with a vaguely defined collection, the 55-year-old museum now has a somewhat more precise mission: collecting, preserving and exhibiting the “cultural arts” of Africa, the Americas and the Pacific Rim. But what are the cultural arts?

“I think it bridges anthropology, bridges the arts. It bridges so many disciplines,” Keller said. “So it really gives us a broad brush. There are very few things that don’t fit into the cultural arts, which I like. . . .

“If you look at areas of Oceania, African art--what we would call the tribal arts--they’re bringing the highest prices at auction of any art form right now, and there isn’t a museum in Southern California that really does them justice. The Natural History Museum does some of it, the Museum of Man in San Diego probably does some, LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) does some, but it’s not really an intense focus. We want this to be the premiere institution for . . . the tribal or ethnic arts.”

When the expanded museum (with twice as much exhibition space) opens to the public in October, 1992, the first-floor permanent galleries will offer a chronological display of objects selected from the 85,000 now in storage.

The tour begins with the pre-Columbian galleries and segues to the American Indian collection, and objects from the Spanish Mission era and California’s Mexican period. Upstairs--in addition to the Asian gallery--the saga of California continues, with an emphasis on the history of Orange County.

But how does a museum tell the multiracial story of California without accusations of bias? “There’s no way to get around it,” Keller said. “Look what’s happening with the Quincentenary (of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas). Nobody’s happy with it. So I guess you just do your best to be as factual as possible without editorial comment. . . . You try to be as generic as possible.

“I think this museum probably has a better history than most in terms of its contacts with various racial groups. For example, Paul Apodaca, our American Indian arts curator, is one of the leading forces in the United States for concerns of the Indian movement. . . . Paul’s also got wonderful connections with the Hispanic community.”

Is it more difficult to deal responsibly with ethnic arts today, when various ethnic groups are expressing increasingly polarized views of mainstream culture? “I think it’s easier, Keller said. “With our communications and jet travel, the world’s a very small place and getting a lot smaller. . . . As long as you let the individual groups have their say. . . . If you bring them in and help them work with you . . . it’s theirs. You’re having them buy into it.”

The “core” of any museum is its collections, Keller said. At the Bowers, he has asked the curators to pick their favorite 10 or 20 objects from the collection. He wants to use this list as a marketing tool that asks, “Where in Orange County can you see?” with a list of such highlights as a soapstone Chumash Indian pipe.

On the other hand, “it’s the changing exhibits you can bring in from all over the world that keep the interest up in an institution,” Keller said. “What’s new? Treasures from where? It’s what keeps your membership going, what brings people back. Museums have done studies. If they don’t have changing exhibitions, people say they go (only) once unless they have relatives or friends from out of town. Why go back to the same old thing?”

Keller repeatedly mentioned the “international protocols” that will permit him to bring to the Bowers a “major pre-Columbian gold” show from the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia, “a major jade exhibition” from Taiwan, an exhibit on Genghis Kahn from China and a Faberge exhibit from the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

Although the Bowers’ membership rolls have only about 500 to 1,000 stalwarts, Keller promised “a major marketing effort for membership” next year, “after we’re in the building and have something to show people. . . . I think when you can show someone, ‘This is what you’re getting,’ (a membership drive) is a lot more effective.”

Senior staff to handle public relations and fund raising will be in place in October, Keller said, along with an editor for Artifacts, the museum membership magazine, which will be revamped into a glossy, and considerably heftier, quarterly publication.

Keller also will be bringing in research associates from UC Irvine and other institutions to work “on an honorary basis” in areas where the Bowers needs expertise: Asian, Oceanic and African art. In the long term, he hopes that the museum’s ethnic membership councils will be able to fund curatorial positions in those fields. Other plans include a monthly lecture series in the new, 300-seat lecture hall and a distinguished speaker series, to be held in larger quarters, perhaps at UCI.

Under a 1986 agreement between the city of Santa Ana and the museum’s private board of governors, the Bowers will continue to receive slightly more than $1 million annually from the city until 1997, when funding will begin to be phased out. By 2008, the museum will be obliged to seek all its funding from private sources. Meanwhile, the Bowers’ budget has grown. In 1992, when it reopens to the public, the Bowers will require “just under” $3 million in operating funds, Keller said.

But he sounded supremely confident the money will be found, citing a survey by the Harrison Price Co. stating that 71% of the museum’s budget can be met by the revenue it can generate--from such sources as admissions and user fees (from conventions and private groups using museum space). The museum also will look to its board for big donations before launching a public capital campaign this fall.

“From a revenue standpoint, the museum is incredibly healthy,” Keller said. “It’s close to (Disneyland in) Anaheim, the freeways, the tourist industry. I’d be surprised if we can’t have the space utilized many nights a week by organizations having meetings. . . . I really feel that, given the proper marketing, with a big sign on the freeway, we are in good shape.”

Even the Bowers’ new restaurant will not be a lowly cafeteria but a “destination place,” Keller said, run by a successful restaurateur to be chosen by the board.

Referring to the Bowers Museum District--the 90-acre cultural and commercial development planned for the area bounded by Main and 17th streets and the Santa Ana Freeway--Keller said he was excited about the future, with “three, five, six museums in this neighborhood” as well as the Bowers’ proximity to other cultural and entertainment offerings.

“Tourists from all over the world will find it simple to come here,” Keller added in the same expansive tone, “and a little more difficult to go down to San Diego or downtown Los Angeles.”