Weisman Awards Program Unveiled : Art: Eleven achievement prizes totaling $240,000 will be handed out on May 23 at LACMA along with hefty Lichtenstein bronzes.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation has announced plans to introduce an annual awards program for outstanding achievements in contemporary art. The inaugural awards will be presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on May 23.

Eleven awards totaling $240,000 will be given this year, according to Henry Hopkins, director of the Los Angeles-based foundation.

In addition to cash, each recipient of a Frederick R. Weisman Art Award will receive a 13x11 1/2x4 3/4-inch painted bronze sculpture of a “brush stroke” by Roy Lichtenstein.

The bulk of the money--$200,000--will go to four artists, in the form of $50,000 purchase prizes. Earlier this year, four American museums that collect and show contemporary art were selected to receive this group of awards. A curator at each museum chose one artwork, priced at about $50,000, for the museum’s collection.

Using Weisman funds, Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art bought “The Reign of Narcissism,” a mixed-media installation by Barbara Bloom; the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu acquired an untitled sculpture by Donald Judd; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York chose “Small Space (Milk Bottle),” a painting with a painted glass bottle by Joe Goode, and the Menil Collection in Houston selected “fresh,” a mixed-media construction by Haim Steinbach. Hopkins said the foundation established $50,000 purchase prizes because that is roughly the cost of works by “artists who have emerged but haven’t quite reached the top of the market yet.”

“In my experience, works in this price range are the most difficult for a museum to acquire,” Hopkins said, referring to his former position as director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “It’s relatively easy to get works in the $5,000 range, and people get excited about donating something spectacular for around $100,000, but it’s harder to attract donations between those extremes,” he said.

Winners of the remaining $40,000 worth of Weisman awards will be announced at a gala ceremony at the museum on May 23:

* A total of $30,000 will go to five curators who organized three exhibitions. (Four curators who worked in pairs will each receive $5,000 and a fifth curator who organized a show independently will be given $10,000).

* Awards of $5,000 will be made to two other individuals--one for lifetime achievement in the arts, the other for exceptional service to the field, Hopkins said.

The most unusual aspect of the awards is the curators category. The foundation decided to emphasize curatorial excellence because that field has been overlooked by existing awards, Hopkins said.

While the world of arts and entertainment doles out highly publicized honors--Oscars for movies, Emmys for television, Tonys for stage, Grammys for the recording industry--awards in the fine visual arts tend to be presented quietly by such scholarly groups as the College Art Assn.

The Weisman program may not change that tradition, but it offers the possibility of a catchy nickname: the Freddys. Weisman winners will also walk away with a weighty trophy. Lichtenstein’s bronze sculpture weighs a hefty 21 pounds--more than twice as much as the 8 1/2-pound Oscar. The colorful bronzes are produced by Gemini, a Los Angeles publisher of prints and other limited edition artworks.

The foundation, which has an endowment of about $12.5 million, is named for Frederick R. Weisman, a major collector of contemporary art and former head of Mid-Atlantic Toyota. Weisman spent several years seeking a home for his vast collection, but he abandoned the search in 1986 when his plan to take over Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills became mired in complications. Subsequently, he has used foundation funds to support programs such as symposiums and the new awards.