A Major Art Player Confirms L.A. Branch : Art: PaceWildenstein has plans for a 10,000-square-foot facility in Beverly Hills, which is shaping up as the center of the West Coast’s blue-chip market.

Ending months of speculation, PaceWildenstein Gallery--the world’s largest art dealership--has confirmed plans that it will open in Beverly Hills next spring.

Marc Selwyn, who has become a highly visible player in the art scene during his four-year tenure as director of fine arts for Sotheby’s West Coast division, will head the new branch of PaceWildenstein. The gallery will be located in a 10,000-square-foot, two-floor space at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Camden Drive, in a building formerly occupied by Gump’s. Preliminary discussions to convert the space into a gallery are under way with Charles Gwathmey, architect of a major addition to New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Coming on the heels of an announcement Thursday that Sotheby’s auction house will open expanded quarters in Beverly Hills in February--with space to conduct auctions--PaceWildenstein’s plans confirm that Beverly Hills is shaping up as the center of the West Coast’s blue-chip art market. In its new niche, PaceWildenstein will likely cater to a wealthy, Hollywood clientele, while exhibiting works by leading figures in Impressionist, modern and contemporary art and photography.

“We are very excited about opening in Los Angeles,” said Arnold Glimcher, director of Pace Gallery of New York, reached by phone on Friday morning. “I believe Los Angeles has more potential for developing collectors than any other city in the United States.”

Although the gallery’s lease has not been signed, Glimcher plans to open in April, preferably about the first of the month. “We would like to have time for two major exhibitions before the summer,” he said.

An art-dealer-turned-film-producer whose credits include “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Mambo Kings,” Glimcher counts Creative Artists Agency chief Michael Ovitz among his top gallery clients and readily admits that film industry access is one reason for bringing PaceWildenstein to the West.

“We have been very successful in Los Angeles,” Glimcher said. “But people in the film industry work very hard. Our best clients have so little time to come to New York, and I have never believed in selling paintings from transparencies. We will have great works in the gallery, and people can come in on a Saturday morning to see them.”

In addition, PaceWildenstein will “develop new clients in Los Angeles that will help all the galleries,” he said.

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PaceWildenstein was formed in October by a merger of two art powerhouses that continue to operate as separate galleries in New York. In a deal that stunned the art world, Wildenstein & Co., one of the world’s leading dealers in Impressionist and Old Master art, acquired a 49% interest in Pace Gallery, a major contemporary dealership that represents many renowned artists and handles estates of such modern giants as Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Alexander Calder. The partnership gave the new entity an inventory of unusual historical breadth.

Selwyn, a 34-year-old graduate of Stanford University and New York University who practiced law before joining Sotheby’s, said he was attracted to his new job by PaceWildenstein’s reputation and international scope. “I am looking forward to the opportunity to handle a stable of artists which is unprecedented for Los Angeles and whose work I am extremely passionate about,” he said. “I am very excited about having the chance to show the work of such artists as Mark Rothko, Chuck Close, Pablo Picasso and Agnes Martin and to give the Southern California public an opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge and appreciation for their work.”

He conceives of PaceWildenstein as “a cultural focal point” rather than a traditional gallery. “I plan to use the resources of Pace-Wildenstein to continue the educational program and lectures which have been so popular at Sotheby’s,” he said.

According to Glimcher, the exhibition program is likely to rotate from contemporary art to Impressionist paintings to photography.

The gallery will not be a mere variation of Pace Gallery in New York, he said. Many of the exhibitions will originate in Beverly Hills, he said. And more Los Angeles-based artists will be featured in the West Coast showcase. As to whom those artists might be, he said: “That isn’t settled yet.”