Hollywood meets Hallowed Hall

© Jeffrey Deitch by Lawrence K. Ho for the LA Times

What an interesting brouhaha over uber-dealer / impressario Jeffrey Deitch becoming the director of MoCA (the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles).

I "grew up" as a professional curator in LA and loved the raw vitality of MoCA, its programming and collection-building. (In full disclosure: current MoCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel hired me as an NEA curatorial assistant at the Newport Harbor Art Museum when I moved to LA, then hired me on full-time afterwards.) MoCA's programs have been some of the best in the contemporary art world, and its recent threatened closure speaks volumes about board fiscal responsibility (or not). It is this fiscal crisis that has opened the door to Deitch walking in.

The commercial-to-non-profit switch has been made before (a recent visible example is Henry Urbach closing his architecture gallery to become the curator of architecture at SFMoMA). What counts is whether or not that for-profit person has the skills to benefit the museum, to advance the non-profit's mission and to understand the difference between non and for-profit ethics.

Deitch has a business and art background, has twisted the norms of gallery behavior through his kunsthalle-like programs, and surely is Hollywood enough to capture the big film money that generally eludes LA's important cultural institutions (although "Brangelina" was at MoCA's 30th anniversary party!)

Perhaps this appointment is more shocking because it makes apparent (again) the power of rich board members to drive museum policy while they helped trigger an institution's near-death experience? Perhaps it's because Deitch is the director, not just a curator who takes cues from the top? Perhaps it's because museums have been the last bastion of "public discourse" in an otherwise fully monetized American landscape, and that last defense has now fallen? Is it because, in these desperate times, having a money changer in the temple of art is the only way for non-profits to save themselves?

What will answer these questions will be Deitch's performance in furthering MoCA's substantial exhibitions program, his penetration into the culture that is LA, his support of the staff that is there and his holding back from the type of street art that he has championed in the past few years. (LA does not have the same type of street life that NY has, and you can only pull that bunny out of the museum hat ever so often.)

Have I lost my capacity to be outraged by conflict-of-interest issues in the world, particularly the art world? After the economy being driven into the tank, again, by Wall Street insiders and the politicians that feed and pet them, how can this possibly register on my rage-o-meter?

I'll say it: I think this is a brilliant, quirky, irreverant hire. So many art world insiders stand on line for their turn at the big hit, and someone just jumped the line.

The arts suffered in the 1980s when MBA's flooded museum director chairs and made decisions that undermined good museum practice. This why a training program for curators interested in becoming directors has started through Columbia University--to ensure that art and business co-exist--and we can avoid these problems in the future.

A parallel, if more understandable, arts brain drain has been the poaching of non-profit staffs to for-profit galleries. Sotheby's and Gagosian have pilfered curators to their stables because they add not just selling skills but quality content for ever-more sophisticated buyers. (An interesting reversal of the retail marketplace, where the consumer does all the work, clerks simply ring up sales.) This hiring makes perfect sense, even in this down market. And these curators who make the leap get bigger salaries, surely understandable in this badly-paid field.

(An aside: when I went to my IKT conference in Montreal two years ago, Louise Neri, formerly of Parkett magazine, was a last-minute addition on the panel about art and money--yes, the Europeans are just now grappling with this age-old American conundrum. Neri had just taken the job of publications editor for Gagosian gallery. The mostly-European group was hostile, one museum director saying to her "I pity you" for going to the dark side--I sure pitied her at that moment! With the American model of funding seeping into European governments, I fear my colleagues abroad will be struggling for funds right along with us soon enough.)

What is a bigger issue for me is when a museum hires a lackluster for-profit person. Why squander public good will if the benefit doesn't outweigh the risk? The general public is already suspicious of institutions receiving public monies, why give them anything more to complain about? These former dealers should be able to secure loans or donations to the collection, should know where good works are sequestered away for unique exhibitions and scholarship, they should be able to raise money for their museums (donations to auctions, for example) or their own projects when there is a cross-over of interest with collectors. Museum boards should keep a slightly different scorecard for such formerly for-profit staff, who are surely used to sales goals.

The standards for curatorial ethics are clear. Deitch has promised he will only sell from his substantial collection when he needs to supplement his salary, but in any case, how Deitch executes the ideas listed above will tell us how much is is able to bridge the ever-narrowing gap between commercial practice and museum ethics.

Everyone will be watching Deitch's moves. I am eager to see what MoCA will do now, and how some of our vigilant journalists will continue to hold the field's toes to the fire.

Starting on a fresh foot

Snow is such a pretty sight, too bad about the air temperature!

Whenever someone talks about the schism between representation and abstraction in art work, I roll my eyes.

A painting of the image above would be representational, despite the geometric abstraction of the brickwork.

We have more important issues to explore in the arts these days!

Hopes for the New Year

Like all products of the human imagination, St. Louis is full of contradictions.

While I see middle-class African Americans everywhere I go, there are pockets of the city that look like the worst cliches of Detroit--bombed out blocks of buildings, boarded up homes, small businesses with iron bars across their windows.

On a phone-in radio show on Christmas Eve, leaders in the city talked about their wishes for the New Year. Many expressed their desire to more fully grapple with segregation in this very American city.

A small beacon of hope: this sign off of Delmar in the Loop. Not a fancy, in-your-face sign, just one sitting quietly observing the traffic crossroads as Delmar transforms abruptly and absolutely from a vibrant college / touristy street into one of those depressed areas.The sign above, however, signals some hope for us all.

Other things I hope for in the coming year:

That our system of justice actually punishes the people who drove the economy into the tank--in other words, the white collar criminals who caused million dollar plus negative economic impact on people around the globe be truly punished.

That women across the globe attain rights to health and safety and equal access to economic opportunities. I heard on NPR once (or maybe I read this in a book about the history of feminism in Egypt?) that, in the developing world, for every $100 a woman earns, she puts $90 towards her family; for every $100 a man earns, he puts $90 towards his own pleasure. Imagine how countries could develop with more investment in the education of women and girls?

That we draw our war in Iraq to a close, and that the American government recognize our military actions in the Middle East are but a foolish inheritance from post-World War II European imperialism. We need to think of our own future, not protect the actions of Old Europe.

I also hope to see my boyfriend Kevin more in the New Year--this may be the one wish I have some control over!

Western Modernism re-made, part I

Mona Hatoum World, 2004, at Site Santa Fe

Over the past fifteen years or so I have been lecturing, curating, traveling and teaching about how non-Western artists have reinvigorated Western Modernism by reinterpreting it from many different perspectives. When cultural tourism allowed for a wide range of Western curators to visit new places--like the Johannesburg or Istanbul biennials--how to place non-Western artists into a Western historical context became a topic of some importance.

How not to repeat the problems of MoMA's Primitivism show or the Pompidou's Magiciens de la Terre, where the curatorial premise reduced whole continents of artist's works into a formal mimicry of Western modernism?

It all boils down to context context context (location location location, or the place from whence you view the work).

Of course many institutions will work with non-Western artists to be fashionable, but to truly understand the intellectual import of these artist's work in considering post-independence Africa or Palestinian diaspora for example, is another thing.
















Gabriel Orozco in How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, Walker Art Center, 2003

Hatoum's work, above, is the globe in marbles. One false move, one petulant kick, and the whole thing goes haywire.

Orozco's installation, below, is a maze punctuated by signifiers of travel--a train or plane ticket--to suggest the dislocation of travel, flight, emmigration, diaspora. Both these artists rely on their own cultural histories to vault across the brittleness of late, mannered Modernism to create a fresh, vibrant world for us to consider. Imperialism is as much intellectual as actual, and these artists raise those issues in new ways.

I hope to be exploring some of these ideas with some of these artists, over the next few years, at Laumeier Sculpture Park and through my teaching at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Because of the uniqueness of our space, we have some great opportunities to vault beyond what a traditional institution can do and see what the second decade of the 21st century will hold.

Build It, But Will They Come?

Kevin McMahon and Akua Nyame-mensah "The Bilbao Boom or Bust?" in Next American City, issue 25, pp. 30-31.

Of all the news analyses of the trends of the '00's I have particularly enjoyed the writing about the museum building boom of the past decade.

This recent article in Next American City and Robin Pogrebin's December 12 article in the New York Times both explored the trend of large museum additions and the resulting economic impact on the museum itself. (We know this routine: a museum expands, the director leaves, staff is laid off. Rinse. Repeat.)

I started anticipating the "Bilbao Effect" in 1998 faced with the addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum being completed. But since the economic collapse of the 1980s I have also bemoaned the grafting of for-profit management and market-expansion goals onto non-profits to disastrous effect.

What if, like businesses, non-profits don't have endless capacity for market expansion unless they "buy" other businesses (or expand their own space)? What if we cannot force increased market share (museum attendance) just because we're bigger? What if the expanded institution misinterprets the new entertainment options available and thus misinterprets their own mission and goals accordingly? What, ultimately, is the value of the preservation of material culture in our throw-away American society?

Is, perhaps, the museum model still a fundamentally European ideal?

Of the examples in the article above--Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Akron and Roanoke--I would say the Zaha Hadid building in Cincinnati had both an impact on the city and the art world because of the budget kept in check, it was the completion of a first museum building by a woman, etc...

But the most important question is: have the exhibitions at any of these institutions matched the ambitions of the building for the better elucidation of ideas, the unearthing of new content, the reinterpretation of the past in light of the present and future?

I would say rarely has that happened. So what, then, is the ultimate goal of the "Edifice Complex"? More realistic understanding of the museum's role in contemporary society, getting back to non-profit roots, actually press politicians and supporters to understand what museums do for the community, and not just in terms of tax revenue.

Place Your Bets Here

My friend Judith Patrylak (shout out from Phoenix!) and I went to Cahokia Mounds last weekend to see one of the most significant cultural touchstones of the St. Louis region.

Judith had studied Native American history in one of her many past lives; I am interested in re-animating our cultural histories in as many ways as possible.

What I learned:
Much of our cultural heritage has been lost through attrition, neglect, manifest destiny.
Many St. Louis residents have never visited Cahokia.
The State of Illinois has to cycle out Illinois state maps with Rob Blagojevich still listed as governor. (The state's bird=jail bird?)

What struck me was the smartness of a display at the end of the "tour" in the Visitor Center.

They didn't just tell you the current archaeological theories for the collapse of Cahokia Mound society--they asked you to bet on which one won (or lost, depending on your perspective) with money fed directly into the display.

What a brilliant funding strategy!

"Failure of Leadership" was not the highest-grossing of the four winning answers, but given the climate discussions in Copenhagen this past week, we might want to start our own bets.

















One of my favorite recent reads was Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. Collapse kept coming back to me while thinking about cultural sustainability because, ultimately, this is what we are up against.

I don't mean just non-profits, I mean the various institutions that fulfill the "social contact" that has driven Western Civilization for the past 500 years.

We should all take lessons from Cahokia.

What a difference a year makes

Sparkly Christmas tree at the Fountainebleau hotel, Miami Beach.

Just got back from ArtBasel Miami. I do miss the warmth of the south--did it really have to rain?

I skipped Miami last year, art fair weariness. I have no problems with the market. However, as a curator, I simply got tired of having to fight to talk to dealers who were so focused on selling to institutions, not necessarily helping to build a more firm artistic career. The market calming down is a good thing for curators and artists, but maybe not for the dealers.

This year I went to Miami in a different position and therefore my goals were different. I was able to meet with several members of my new International Advisory Committee (check Laumeier's website soon for details): Silvia Karman Cubina, director of the Bass Museum of Art, Beverly Adams, curator of the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection of Latin American art in Phoenix and Laurie Farrell, Director of Exhibitions, Savannah College of Art and Design. I had great conversations with all three of these experts who will be helping us work on outdoor temporary projects and collections-based exhibitions. I can't wait.

And of course I did see a lot of art.

The on-going rash of deer has not died down--I first started noticing this about five years ago in Miami (simultaneous with the storm of snowmen in art, and I've got the pictures to prove it).






















Bambi and a big rack (titled by Beverly)
















Bambi in the head / spot lights outside the convention center

The blizzard of snowmen several years ago was certainly a response to being in the lush tropics of Miami (just as the rash of genitalia in art was a symptom of hotel art fairs before that).

















Gratitude towards junk culture at Nada Fair

The Taco Bell work was nicely ironic given the predominant influence of Latin American in Miami. Taco Bell is but a ploy of the fast food industry to sell a foreign culture's cuisine in a non-threatening (and non-spicy?) way to Americans. Right outside the convention center's doors is a polyglot range of food types rarely found in mainstream kitchens.

I moved rather quickly through the fairs with various friends and colleagues (hence my shocking lack of names for many of the works I am showing you). I ran into many colleagues whose own works or ideas will be great to bring to St. Louis--this is the biggest part of what I brought back with me from Miami.

I also got over to most of the private collector spaces--the Cisneros Foundation, the Margulies collection (needs some curatorial focus, a good architect might help snap that place together) and the new Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz space.

















Inside the new De la Cruz exhibition space, with Allora & Calzadilla missile in foreground

















Outside the De la Cruz space

The view outside this gorgeous new space brought home the inherent difficulties of selling, buying, making, presenting and loving art. With the obvious surrounding poverty of the area, the work of Allora & Calzadilla and Ana Mendieta became sharper, while the seductive work of Jim Hodges became softer. I look forward to seeing if they impose quasi-curatorial themes to their shows, a la Rubell, or toss things out choc-a-block like Marguelies.

Miami is really the wild west of the American art world, for good or bad, but they've really had an impact on how we see the arts in that city. The cabbie who returned me to my hotel had moved to Miami from Surinam about 25 years ago, and he said he's going to miss us art people because we are helping their economy.

Now that is the true shock of the current bad economy--that people are looking to the art world to help them.

What a difference a year makes.

all photos courtesy the author