A big storm is brewing in Los Angeles…. the Museum of Contemporary Art, financially battered and in desperate need of fresh blood, has unaminously voted in Jeffrey Deitch as its new director. A SOHO gallery impresario, Harvard MBA, ex-Citibank VP (he created its art advisory business), and current king of the downtown scene (see: Nest), Deitch won out over the New Museum’s Lisa Phillips and Tate Modern’s old director Lars Nittve. Kesley Keith describes this as a gamechanger.
There is a big issue here. Deitch will be the first gallery world player to direct a major museum, and everyone is wondering if this out-of-box thinking is just what MOCA needs, or another huge misstep in an already disastrous past couple of years. In his New York article, written before the big news leaked out, Jerry Saltz points out that Deitch brings a diverse array of skills to the table, many of which are ideally suited to the needs of an embattled museum like MOCA. He has the business training, the art world connections, and his ability to connect works with buyers might be transferable to connecting MOCA with big-time donors.
But is blending the art world’s supposedly hermetic profit/non-profit spheres the direction museums should be taking? Will Deitch’s deal-making acumen corrupt the ‘purity’ of MOCA’s curatorial mission? One of the other names being mentioned for the MOCA position should already be familiar to art gossip mongers – Lisa Phillips was at the center of November’s brouhaha over the New Museum’s upcoming Deste show. In the face of a burst bubble, museums are developing new models for generating income and producing shows, ones which rely more explicitly on the auction and gallery scenes. Is this a necessary move that will help perpetuate the humanist missions of such institutions, are is it a case selling the baby for the bathwater?
Photography by Tim Barber
