NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.— In the latest twist involving the Orange County Museum of Art’s much-criticized sale of 18 of its 20 California Impressionist paintings to an undisclosed private collector in March, the museum’s director now says he'll let other museums know who the mystery buyer is, under certain conditions.

OCMA director Dennis Szakacs says he’ll direct other museum professionals to the collector if they’re interested in borrowing some of the works for an exhibition or in cultivating as a philanthropic patron somebody who could afford $963,000 for the paintings. In past weeks, directors at California’s Laguna and Irvine Museums and San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art have said the transaction’s secrecy violated the public interest by preventing them from bidding to keep the works in collections accessible to the public. All along, Szakacs has defended his action, saying it ensured that the paintings would stay in the Orange County community when an auction would have probably dispersed them. On Friday he said he had broached the idea of OCMA trading the plein-air paintings for some of Laguna’s contemporary-art holdings but then proceeded with the sale when he never heard back from the other museum.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.