POLITICS AND THE ARTS - The situation at MOCA continues to deteriorate. Recent reporting in the Los Angeles Times revealed that Eli Broad is withholding payments on his $30 million gift to the museum.
Broad’s spokesperson excused him by stating that he was not going to turn over his promised gift until MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) spent funds he had donated earlier. This provoked Charles Young, former UCLA chancellor and interim MOCA director supported by Broad, to remind Broad publicly that he had signed a contract committing him to pay on a schedule, independent of any other expenditures or obligations that MOCA made with Broad’s other donations.
And meanwhile, the MOCA board seems incapable of raising funds needed for operations.
The curatorial staff is not the only one that has suffered deep cuts. The curatorial department is down four curators and the directors of development. I don’t think he is planning on filling these positions since he laid off the Director of Human Resources, too.
Charles Young also called for Executive Director Jeffrey Deitch to leave, noting the bad morale and lack of confidence by the staff and the arts community.
Long planned shows developed by the curatorial staff have been postponed due to lack of funds because Deitch has not fulfilled a key responsibility of fundraising for operations and the shows.
Instead, the limited funds he has raised go for exhibitions he has curated or those developed by celebrity guest curators.
According to insiders, Deitch has used his personal funds to help underwrite his shows. The practice is highly unusual. It creates the appearance of conflict of interest and raises ethics questions, since Deitch was formerly an art dealer. At minimum it circumvents the integrity of the museum’s curatorial process.
Stay tuned, more to come …
(Sara Epstein is a CityWatch contributor.) –cw
Tags: MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Eli Broad, Jeffrey Deitch, curator, MOCA curator
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 67
Pub: Aug 21, 2012
