DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997           TAG: 9702270067

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

IT'S OFFICIAL: THE CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER OF VIRGINIA

THE CONTEMPORARY Art Center of Virginia. Heard of it?

Jim Spruance sheepishly calls it the name du jour.

Spruance is the acting director of an arts center, located at the entrance to Route 44 in Virginia Beach. In January, the center was renamed from Virginia Beach Center for the Arts to Virginia Center for Contemporary Art.

But forget those names. Last week, the center's board of trustees voted to adopt a new name: The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia.

In a way, it came down to cows.

Here's how it happened:

The center wanted a new name that reflected its regional ambitions and its commitment to the significant art of our time. Thus, Virginia Center for Contemporary Art.

After announcing its new name in January, center officials noticed that another arts organization had a similar tag - the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, a 25-year-old arts colony on a hilltop in Sweet Briar, Va. And that they shared the same abbreviation, VCCA. So the Beach folks called the Sweet Briar folks to gauge their reaction before designing a new logo and printing new stationery.

``They were a little concerned,'' Spruance said.

``I thought there was a lot of potential for confusion,'' said Craig Pleasants, interim director of the Sweet Briar facility. ``Our constituencies overlap. And, in a way, they are the same names. They both imply support for artwork currently being created.''

Even before the Beach center came up with that name, the Sweet Briar facility occasionally received mail addressed to the Virginia Center for Contemporary Art, Pleasants said.

The Beach officials decided, ``in the interest of clarification and to make them feel better,'' that they would change their abbreviation to VACCA, while retaining the name Virginia Center for Contemporary Art.

But the Beach center's new director, Dr. Barbara Bloemink, who starts on Monday, was taken aback by the abbreviation. Having curated shows and written about art from Spanish-speaking cultures, she immediately saw that VACCA was uncomfortably close to vaca, Spanish for cow, Spruance said.

To some, vaca is a derogatory term for women.

So the staff huddled on yet another name. What they came up with is ``the same letters and words, just juggled around,'' he said. ``We wanted Contemporary Art, and we wanted Virginia.''

At that point, it was only a matter of sequence and syntax.

Voila: The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, or CACV.

When Pleasants learned of that name change earlier this week, he sounded relieved. ``I am very happy to hear that,'' he said.

Meanwhile, the signs on the highway and at the entrance to the center still read: Virginia Beach Center for the Arts.

``It's a good thing,'' said Spruance, good-humoredly. ``We probably would have had to paint it three times.''

The name changes incurred little expense, he said. Mainly, a small fee to the State Corporation Commission to place a three-month reservation on a new name.

Those few dollars, and ``a little egg on my face,'' Spruance said.

He said he feels sure they won't step on anybody else's abbreviation with this latest change. In registering another name, Beach officials specifically asked the SCC to make a thorough check of other close names. And none was found.

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