(MOCA said its budget has now returned to pre-COVID levels and that “nearly all laid-off part-time staff” have been offered the opportunity to return.) Human resources director Carlos Viramontes quit in February, citing the “hostile environment,” according to the Times. As the museum planned to reopen in 2021, curator Mia Locks quit, writing in an exit email to staff, according to the Los Angeles Times, that “MOCA’s leadership is not yet ready to fully embrace IDEA”- IDEA being an acronym for inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. (By comparison, in New York the Met reopened in August 2020.) The policies led MOCA to cut about a quarter of its budget, from about $22 million to about $16 million, and lay off 97 part-time staff members. Then came the pandemic and California’s comparatively harsh lockdown protocols, which forced the museum to close from March 2020 until June 2021. The museum and Vergne decided not to renew his contract. I wish I had that struggle, because then I could really test myself against what that might feel like.” Vergne fired her in March 2018, citing “creative differences,” initiating more headlines and pushback from then board member Opie. She reportedly went into an ironic voice and said, “I am never under pressure to support the work of extremely affluent white male artists who are collected by the affluent white male people who run the museum.
#La moca museum series#
In 2017, while onstage in San Francisco for an interview series sponsored by Artadia, Molesworth was asked about the difficulties she faced in her job. But controversy followed as well, this time in the guise of his chief curator Helen Molesworth, who chafed against the way in which the collecting habits of the board seemed to dictate who got shows at her museum. That replacement was Vergne, the serious-minded director at the Dia Art Foundation. Kruger is currently one of the museum’s four artist trustees. MOCA said Ruscha, Kruger, and Opie returned in 2013 to help the search for Deitch’s replacement. Deitch, exhausted, raised the white flag in 2013.
Artists Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, and Barbara Kruger all resigned from the board. Deitch’s brash MOCA remake played to the crowd- Julian Schnabel curates a Dennis Hopper revue! Let’s do a whole show about disco with LCD Soundsystem! More James Franco performance art!-and caused a collective freak-out among the Angeleno intelligentsia. But to get a sense of the long history of controversy at MOCA, it’s instructive to go back to the shock appointment of Jeffrey Deitch as the museum’s director in 2010. The Broad, founded by the late MOCA life trustee Eli Broad had an attendance of 917,489 in 2019, vastly eclipsing MOCA’s final tally that year of 357,747.īiesenbach’s tenure as artistic director was beset with criticism from its 2018 start when it was announced that a white European male would replace another white European male, Philippe Vergne. (MOCA said this characterization of the board was inaccurate.) It also doesn’t help that a couple of donors opened their own L.A. “I personally could not have asked for a more gifted and inspiring person to lead MOCA with!” Biesenbach wrote on Instagram.Īccording to sources, that common denominator is specifically MOCA’s board, which has long demanded more control of the museum than at many institutions-former curators have departed amid squabbles with the board, and one publicly complained about being forced to make programming reflect what’s on the walls of the homes of MOCA’s patrons.
Maybe it wouldn’t have worked 20 years ago and it won’t work 20 years from now, but it’s the right moment for us now.” “I think this is the right model for us right now.
“I don’t think it is one job,” Maria Seferian, the former lawyer who now serves as chair of the board at MOCA, told The New York Times upon Burton’s appointment.
After months of turmoil, with staff resignations, a revenue drop, layoffs of 97 part-time employees, and furloughs of more than 30 full-time employees, MOCA seemed to finally have a road map to the future. The two would share responsibilities in a carefully calibrated leadership structure. After months of searching for an executive director to share duties with artistic director Klaus Biesenbach, the museum announced earlier this month that it had poached Johanna Burton from the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. For a few days there was the rare appearance of calm at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
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