Broad. (Patrick McMullan)

After a rocky summer, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is planning to hold a meeting today, the Los Angeles Times reports. The meeting is intended to bring together trustees whose "willingness to donate" is crucial for the museum, which recently suffered budget cuts. The Los Angeles Times interviewed six of the 39 trustees, some of whom telegraphed their disappointment with respect to the way the board is run in no uncertain terms, one claiming the whole board is "traumatized" by Eli Broad while another said, "Eli stepped in, and it sort of became a one-man show."

From the story:

Distress over how the MOCA board operates surfaced in an exchange of emails in early August between trustee Lauren King and board president Jeffrey Soros, which was obtained by The Times.

King, who was co-chair of the committee that deals with fundraising, objected to a decision to take her and several others off the executive committee.

Soros — a documentary film producer and nephew of famed billionaire George Soros — replied that "the feeling was that the executive committee was overpopulated, inhibiting its true function, that is to move quickly in exigent circumstances."

King responded unhappily: "It's very strange to be voted off an executive committee and not even know about it. No self-appointed small elite group should be able to …reappoint themselves, change board rules to eliminate other executive board members, eliminate an education committee, fire a curator.... It's a wonder that any board member stays under the current regime.... We keep getting letters telling us that everything is fine. Just to let you know — it's not."

Deitch. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

In early 2010, when the news broke that a respected art dealer, Jeffrey Deitch, had been named director of the financially struggling Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum’s decision was widely considered a controversial one. This had, of course, happened before: back in the early 1960s, Walter Hopps left his partnership in Los Angeles’s fabled Ferus Gallery to head up the Pasadena Art Museum, where he went on to a successful museum career that included a now-famous Marcel Duchamp exhibition. But who ever said the art world has a long memory? In fact, there have been many role changes in the past few years, including Guggenheim Museum director Lisa Dennison’s departure from the museum to work for Sotheby’s, and Picasso guru John Richardson and, more recently, the Museum of Modern Art’s chief curator emeritus John Elderfield joining the ranks at Gagosian Gallery. As well-financed galleries regularly put on blockbuster shows that are ballsier and more spontaneous than slow-moving museums could ever manage, the role of today’s art institution—and its staff—is at risk and thus up for grabs. Veteran curators are not immune to the smell of money, so it’s no surprise that some of them deservedly want to cash in a few chips. What made the MOCA appointment unusual in this context was that Mr. Deitch went in the opposite direction, giving up his eponymous commercial gallery in order to run a nonprofit institution that needed reinventing. Ironically, instead of receiving praise for his decision to focus on art instead of art commerce, he has been dogged by suspicion, accusations and mistrust from the beginning of his tenure.

The art press has always assiduously followed Mr. Deitch’s moves; his entertainer’s knack for drawing a crowd is one of the main reasons he was chosen to lead the troubled and financially weak MOCA. True to form, he debuted with a newsworthy Dennis Hopper photography show, perhaps a nod to LA’s real art and entertainment history, and to the fact that Mr. Hopper, a real LA cult figure, was dying of cancer. Sadly, he died just before the show went up. Then there was the “Art in the Streets” exhibition, a story Mr. Deitch tells better than anyone, all the way from Basquiat to Banksy. The show was a windfall for the museum, attendance-wise, but the purists continued to gripe and turn up their noses. More recently he did the seriously great “Abstraction After Warhol” show currently on view at the museum, and no one can fault that one, though I’d bet it hasn’t been a crowd-pleaser.

There may have been disagreement in the art community over some of those programming decisions, but it wasn’t until two recent events that all hell broke loose. The dismissal of MOCA’s chief curator, Paul Schimmel, who had been at the museum for 22 years (and the decision not to replace him), was closely followed by Mr. Deitch’s confirmation of an upcoming exhibition dedicated to the era of disco, prompting all four artists on the museum’s board—the luminaries Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie—to resign in protest. [Update, 7 p.m.: MOCA just announced that it will hire a new chief curator.] In response, a lynch mob of art pundits  have now joined the witch-hunt. During the initial uproar over Mr. Schimmel’s departure, Mr. Broad, a life trustee who rescued the museum with a $30 million matching grant in 2008, came out in defense of Mr. Deitch in an op-ed in the LA Times, but two weeks ago the paper was mysteriously in possession of a letter that former MOCA chief executive Charles Young wrote to his “friend” Mr. Broad, urging him to fire Mr. Deitch, and now rumors are flying around the art world that Mr. Deitch’s directorship cannot survive such a loss of face and faith.

“I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job for which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified,” Mr. Young wrote in his letter. But before hasty judgments, let’s consider the amnesia relating to why Mr. Deitch was brought in: the institution was under financial duress and had poor attendance for years, and so it tried a new direction with a new kind of director.

As for Paul Schimmel, his departure appears to have been long overdue. I’ve heard rumors from trustworthy sources that he had been shopping around for another position for many years, long before Mr. Deitch entered the picture. I’ve always respected Mr. Schimmel because he is one of the few curators out there who speaks his mind and sticks to his deep commitment to art and artists, but it’s quite possible that his strong opinions and charmingly gruff manner didn’t help him in today’s job market. I know for a fact that Mr. Schimmel was very unhappy with the selection of Mr. Deitch as his boss, and if I knew it he must also have let everyone in town know it.

The art snob in me agrees with much in Mr. Schimmel’s style of curating, but in LA, where a competitor museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and its photogenic director Michael Govan have been absorbing most of the donor dollars, that strategy wasn’t working, and so the board and its main benefactor made a change. Will it ultimately turn out to have been a bad move? It is far too soon to judge Mr. Deitch, but museum goers did increase from 149,000 the year before Mr. Deitch arrived to 402,000 in 2011. Mr. Deitch’s populist blockbuster shows brought people in the door—and that is what he was hired to do.

Then there are the criticisms leveled at Mr. Broad. Instead of the praise he deserves for saving MOCA with a $30 million matching grant, he has been the victim of absurd rumors and allegations related to the private museum he is planning for a site across the street from MOCA. The spiciest blog post, on Coagula Art Journal, went like this: “If MOCA is downsized into a celebrity-curated kunsthalle style circus, it will give the blue chip Broad museum across the street more Gravitas. And then of course when MOCA is broke yet again—who will save MOCA by purchasing the best paintings in the collection because the museum is more concerned with event programming? The Broad Museum across the street of course.” But not all the attacks and rumors have been so easy to laugh off. The respected and influential curator Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art, weighed in on the affair by heaping bitter criticism on Mr. Broad and his choice: “Dismissing Paul Schimmel in favor of Deitch is like cashing in all your value stocks and doubling down on junk bonds for the sake of a long-shot windfall.”

It always surprises me when patronage of the arts is met with this level of criticism and rebuke, and it certainly won’t encourage others to be generous with their gifts. As far as Mr. Deitch is concerned, his transition from gallerist to museum director was a natural progression; he always put the artists first and the commerce second. Those of us who’ve followed his gallery’s program always knew Jeffrey was never in it solely for the money: the zeitgeist was what his gallery, Deitch Projects, was about, and that’s what MOCA’s board wanted to bring to their museum. Messrs. Schimmel and Deitch were, understandably, oil and water from day one. The day Mr. Deitch was hired, Mr. Schimmel should have been retired with a respectable severance package, one befitting a 20-year veteran (I’m sure he’ll now turn up as an power-adviser at a major gallery just like Messrs. Richardson and Elderfield). I must assume the board was torn, and so for the past two years they decided not to decide, leaving the two men to quarrel in public. This was a clearly a mistake for all concerned, one that ended up further harming the institution’s reputation.

Now those who claim to love the institution are the ones who are putting it at risk. Charles Young was wrong to put down Mr. Deitch in writing; his rebuke, even if in a “private” correspondence with Mr. Broad, was not in the best interest of the institution he claims to care for. The same is true for those revered artists who left the board: to jump ship en masse at this critical juncture is not simply a rebuke of Mr. Deitch and the board’s direction for the museum; their actions have endangered the credibility and the future of the institution.

There is a popular misconception that museums are on rock-solid footing and that patron dollars grow on trees, but the truth is that, in the U.S., our public art institutions are fragile and subject to all sorts of riptides, especially because they receive virtually all of their funding from private donations. Those who purport to love art should not jeopardize the very institutions that preserve it. It’s a sad and irresponsible reaction to an unfortunate case of mismanagement. Right now it’s easy to sling mud and heap blame, and when famous artists join the ranks of those slinging, the situation quickly goes from bad to painfully ugly. I hope MOCA’s trustees will stick to their convictions, steady the ship and stay the course for better and worse. The worst way to weather a storm is to let it push you around. You end up buried in every swell, and that’s a sure recipe for getting dismasted.

editorial@observer.com

Deitch. (Patrick McMullan)

Jeffrey Deitch defends the seriousness of his exhibition program at MOCA Los Angeles. An excerpt: "'I'm embattled,' Deitch says in a tone more sorrowful than angry." The museum director also says that two new "significant" trustees will join the board in the next few days. [LAT]

Arts philanthropist Martin E. Segal has died at the age of 96. "He went into the office almost every day and out on the town almost every night." He was also married for 74 years. [NYT]

Jeremy Deller's bouncy Stonehenge arrives in London. [Guardian]

Blake Gopnik thinks Bravo's Gallery Girls misrepresents the New York art world. [Daily Beast]

Elad Lassry, whose show at the Kitchen opens in September, has his first monographic show at an Italian museum, in Milan. [ArtDaily]

Sarah Hoover, Tom Sachs's fiancee, broke a heel over the weekend in Aspen. [Page Six]

Reddit loves, steals statue. [CBC]

Abu Dhabi Art announces its 2012 exhibitor list. [ArtDaily]

Should judges rule on art authenticity? [NYT]

Lion Attacking a Horse is now on view at the Getty. [WSJ]

Former surgeon Jonathan Singer in the second of a two-part show at the New Jersey State Museum. [NYT]

"Theaster Gates is a performance artist and real-estate developer." And he has big plans for a vacant bank building in the Windy City. (Free registration required) [Chicago Tribune]

Deitch. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

In another stunning development in the situation at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art that was ignited by the abrupt departure of chief curator Paul Schimmel, former MOCA executive director Charles Young sent an e-mail to life trustee Eli Broad calling for the removal of director Jeffrey Deitch. The Los Angeles Times got hold of the letter, in which Mr. Young calls the debacle, which has resulted in the resignation of its four artist-trustees, a "four-alarm fire."

From Mr. Young's letter as per the story:

"I hope that the four-alarm fire now enveloping MOCA has at least given you pause for thought about his appointment and your continued attempts to try to save him for a job for which many (including myself) believe he is unqualified," Young wrote to Broad. "The resignation of dedicated, long-term trustees, and especially four highly respected artists of international acclaim should bother you, David [Johnson], Maria [Bell] and the other continuing members of the Board. The question is 'What is now to be done?'"

The Los Angeles Times has reported that Eli Broad, left, told Paul Schimmel that the MOCA board had voted to fire him. The museum's director, Jeffrey Deitch, right, told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Schimmel resigned. At center, Edythe Broad, Mr. Broad's wife. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan Company)

More than two full days after news broke that the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and its chief curator, Paul Schimmel, had parted ways, the exact circumstances of his departure remain unclear, and various national newspapers are offering differing accounts of whether or not he was fired. The official line from MOCA is that Mr. Schimmel, who has declined to speak with press, resigned.

Since the story broke on Thursday morning, the Los Angeles Times has maintained in a number of stories that Mr. Schimmel was let go. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal yesterday acknowledged those reports of his firing while also quoting MOCA's director, Jeffrey Deitch, denying them: "I've been supportive of his projects and acquisitions. He resigned. He was not fired."

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported that MOCA's board had voted the day before to fire Mr. Schimmel. Times reporters Jori Finkel and Mike Boehm wrote, "According to several sources, he was summoned to the office of billionaire art collector and philanthropist Eli Broad, MOCA's top funder, and told of the board's decision."

Yesterday evening, the Times noted MOCA's official line—that Mr. Schimmel resigned—while still standing by its reporting that he was, in fact, fired. This new report quotes MOCA board co-chair Maria Bell stating that Mr. Schimmel told her and co-chair David Johnson on Monday that he planned to resign, and that the official resignation came through only on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson tells Ms. Finkel, "This is something that has been a general discussion for some time." Ms. Finkel continues, "Several people familiar with the circumstances of Schimmel’s departure had told The Times he was fired. They did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly about museum personnel changes."

Ms. Crow, in her piece in The Journal, offers no timetable of the resignation. She notes, "No specific reason for his departure was given, and the museum said it has no plans to seek a successor."

The fact that it took MOCA more than a day to distribute a full release about Mr. Schimmel's departure is certainly curious. Its initial statement on Thursday read in full: "Paul Schimmel is stepping down as MOCA's chief curator. It's amicable and there will be a release tomorrow." (On Thursday, The New York Times quoted that statement and noted the "contentious working relationship" that the curator shared with Mr. Deitch; the paper has not reported that Mr. Schimmel was fired.)

Lambasting Mr. Deitch and the MOCA board in a piece published yesterday, Times critic Christopher Knight, like his colleagues at the paper, maintained that Mr. Schimmel had been let go by the museum's board and that Mr. Broad had personally delivering the verdict to the curator. Mr. Knight criticized the museum for its handling of the affair:

(When [the release] finally appeared, nothing much was added to the news beyond gushing praise for the victim, though it clung to the euphemism "resigned.") That 36-hour sequence speaks not of unconventional thinking but of institutional ineptitude, indifference and even callousness. The museum was unprepared.

That complete statement, distributed to press on Friday by the museum, states that Mr. Schimmel stepped down to become an independent curator, and notes that the museum had decided to name the exhibition space at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary building after the curator. In the release, Mr. Schimmel states that he is "deeply honored."

Schimmel. (Courtesy PMC)

Update 2:20 p.m.
We've just received a statement from MOCA Board Co-Chair David G. Johnson on the matter of the departure of longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel.

The statement reads in full:

"Paul Schimmel is stepping down as MOCA's chief curator. It is amicable and there will be a press release tomorrow."

Update 12:40 p.m. 

The LA Times now reports that Mr. Schimmel has been "fired."

Mat Gleason says he obtained the story from "several high-placed sources at the museum," who described Mr. Schimmel's reported downsizing as part of a "bloodbath" that included the firing of at least three other people in various departments of the museum. In his understanding, the firings came in the wake of an end-of-fiscal-year budget meeting on Tuesday.

Original post

Paul Schimmel, the long-serving chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, appears to be parting ways with the museum. The news was first reported late last night by Los Angeles-based art writer Mat Gleason on his Coagula blog. Mr. Schimmel and the museum were not immediately available for comment, but an informed source has confirmed the move.

One of the nation's most respected curators of contemporary art, Mr. Schimmel was famed for his gigantic, exhaustive group surveys on extremely recent contemporary art, like the 1992 show "Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s."

The reasons for Mr. Schimmel's departure remain unclear. Mr. Gleason's blog post would seem to indicate that he was let go. MOCA has struggled with financial issues in recent years as it fights to regrow its endowment, which shrank as it ran deficits and its investments were battered because of economic turmoil. Director Jeffrey Deitch and Mr. Schimmel have also been said to have had an acrimonious relationship.

We'll have updates as the story develops.

Mr. Deitch. (Courtesy Getty Images)

Artnet's Rachel Corbett recently posted a report from a panel at Basel that featured Baer Faxt proprietor Josh Baer and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Director Jeffrey Deitch. Her write-up focuses on what seems to have been a major part of the discussion: Mr. Deitch's transition from dealer to museum director.

Mr. Deitch spoke to the difficulties of fund-raising for shows, and said competition for new work is only becoming more intense in an era when private collections are only becoming more impressive. From the report:

“The challenge is how to connect with a big audience when people only sell to multimillionaires who have private foundations and the ability to display the work beautifully,” Deitch said. “What happens if you ask an artist, ‘Would you rather sell to the Mr. and Mrs. Foundation or sell to a museum where we have limited space and can only show it every four to five years?’”

He also says that people are now disinclined to answer his calls, afraid that he'll ask for money. Hard to imagine they don't pick up every now and then, though.

Wave it proudly. (Courtesy Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)

The 43rd edition of Art Basel has come and gone, and summer has officially arrived in the art world. Happily, two art luminaries who attended the fair—Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles Director Jeffrey Deitch and writer and priest Glenn O'Brien—have left us with some advice to mull during the downtime.

First up, Mr. Deitch told art-market detective Josh Baer at a Basel panel how to be regarded as a big-shot collector. Courtesy The Art Newspaper's In The Frame blog (note: you may need to scroll down), via Greg Allen's Twitter feed:

Deitch said: “I’ll give you a tip. The best way to become a player in the art world is to be an under­bidder on a major work of art [at auction]. You don’t have to spend any money.

The rest of the details are at The Art Newspaper's website. Of course, the risk of this strategy is that you may accidentally end having to shell out major money for a piece you don't want (or can't afford), so be careful.

And now Mr. O'Brien has published on his blog an admirably acerbic take on how to become a successful artist in today's feverish market, in which, he notes,  "elite creators strive to please collectors hungry for a safe haven in a terrifying economy." After surveying the wares in Switzerland, he has some recommendations for the type of work that artists should make:

Wow!—this comes in two main forms: a. That’s a lot of work! B. That’s a lot of stuff.

Howdy Doothat—Similar to wow but with tour de force technique.

…

Monumental Stupidity—If you make it big enough it’s a metaphor.

Give the whole thing a few reads and study up. The next Art Basel is only 360 days away.

MoCA Los Angeles: the future? (Courtesy tbSMITH/Flickr)

Over in e-flux's Art & Education journal, Dr. Nizan Shaked, a professor of art history, museum and curatorial studies at the California State University Long Beach, offers a nice, long look at the state of museum administration and the proliferation of private museums today.

Dr. Shaked juxtaposes the operating style of dealer-turned-director Jeffrey Deitch at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles with that of the activities of Marcia Tucker, the founder of the New Museum in the late 1970s. They embody two definitively different modes of operation, and she finds a great deal more to admire in the latter. Here's her sense of what is happening today:

[W]hat has become increasingly problematic in the atmosphere of deregulation, escalating since the 1970s, is the return to a model Vera Zolberg has characterized as the: “pre-professional era,” where businessmen controlled the function and content of museums. Most recently, blatant undemocratic practices have been openly exercised, becoming practically permissible. It seems that anyone footing enough of the bill can institutionalize their personal taste while exploiting the benefits of tax deduction. For example, rather than choosing to strengthen one of the city’s existing institutions, Broad, [like] other wealthy Americans before him, opted to add another museum that will carry his name, taking control over urban-scale design decisions while receiving rebates from public monies.

The footnotes contain quite a few fine gems. Dr. Shaked highlights, for instance, Christopher Knight's point that the changes in the tax code for top earners over the past few decades has led to an explosion in the creation of private art institutions. (No doubt it has helped fuel the art market, as well.) The wealthy have money to burn.

She also hammers Mr. Deitch for canceling MoCA's planned Jack Goldstein retrospective, making the idiosyncratic argument that "it seems like a dire financial mistake for a newly appointed director who might wish to encourage the local art market by canonizing a revered 'artists’ artist.'"

And she's breathtakingly optimistic about the possibility of change:

The recent shift to the autocratic museum is potentially unsustainable, as we may very well see a cultural shift that will render their criteria extraneous. With the recent budget crisis and its aftermath, the growing public mistrust of banks and corporations, and the invigoration of the left, it is possible to imagine a cultural shift that will devalue the spectacular and the populist, where much of the overpriced contemporary art will eventually take an unrecoverable dip.

The full article is well worth a read.

E.V. Day and Kembra Pfahler, 'Giverny' (Photo by Rozalia Jovanovic)

Friday night, true to the words of gallerist Kathy Grayson, her gallery, the Hole, had been transformed into Monet's gardens at Giverny, or as close an approximation as can be had on the Bowery. The installation was created to house the photographs taken by E.V. Day of Kembra Pfahler at Giverny in Ms. Day's signature futuristic style, which feature a campy twist: Ms. Pfahler, nude, covered in brightly colored paint.

Ms. Grayson was at the door, greeting guests to her gallery. Her hair was icy blue and her silk dress was cream, like a character out of a Japanese Manga film crossed with a Hollywood studio era production. "I had my hair curled," she said, gently fingering her hair, which had been shaped into silky waves for the opening.

As soon as we passed through the doorway, we stepped onto grass--fake grass--which stretched from wall to wall cut through with a gradually winding gravel path. Moving onto the gravel, dodging the occasional child rooting around, revelers were lead along, yellow-brick-road-style, to the gallery's Emerald City, where prickly groves of bamboo, bright tulips and overhanging vines surrounded a gently tinkling pond across which sailed brightly colored water lilies. Some lilies were real, while some were fake. The walls, covered with a photo-banner of willows, confused further the boundary between the fake and real as guests fingered rhododendron leaves and bamboo stalks and looked around in wonder.

Two friends stopped on the bright teal bridge arched over the pond and smiled for a photo op. Further along down the path one young man crouched down within the tall pond reeds and smiled cheekily as his friend snapped a picture. Ms. Pfahler, who could be seen in full red and blue body paint in the large photographs that adorned the walls, was dressed in plainclothes and funky white framed glasses touching up a young woman who was painted red, like her character Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black playing the part of wood sprite.

And then, appearing from behind a thicket of bamboo was Jeffrey Deitch, for whom Ms. Grayson had worked for eight years before starting her own gallery. "What do you think?" Someone asked him.

Mr. Deitch looked around and said, "It brings together all these people who normally wouldn't come together." Then a man approached Mr. Deitch.

"Hey Jeffrey," he said shaking Mr. Deitch's hand. "Kathy learned well from you. This is over the top."

Ms. Grayson's colorful friends were seen peppered throughout the gravel path in the gallery like surreal encounters in the board game Candyland. Artist Terence Koh, in his signature puffy white coat, made a circle around the pond with the Hole's assistant director May Anderson. Artforum's Knight Landesman showed up in a bright red suit. Artist Aurel Schmidt with her dark-framed glasses stood talking to Mr. Deitch. On our way out, a film crew had arrived and Ms. Grayson and Mr. Deitch were speaking to the camera. Outside, visitors lingered smoking and chatting as if keeping the dream alive for a little bit longer.