By Christopher Knight, latimes The Museum of Contemporary Art appears to be headed toward a potentially unpleasant speed bump on the road to recovery from several years of well-documented troubles: Its upcoming exhibition program is a mystery. A big, challenging retrospective of mixed-media works by the late, hugely influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley closes Monday at MOCA’s warehouse space in Little Tokyo. Then the building will be temporarily shuttered for some unspecified roof repairs. A reopening date has not yet been set. But when it is, eager museum visitors can look forward to seeing — well, what they’ll be seeing is hard to say. At the Geffen Contemporary, MOCA’s future exhibition schedule is blank. Meanwhile, over at the main MOCA building on Grand Avenue, a brash and witty show of Hollywood and mass-media-related videos, posters and altered photographs by Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli continues for a few more weeks. After “Cinema Vezzoli” closes Aug. 11, it will be followed by — well, who knows? Except for a place-holding, four-month presentation of Andy Warhol’s large 1978-79 installation of silk-screened “Shadows,” on loan from New York’s Dia Art Foundation, nothing is on the schedule at MOCA Grand Avenue, either. In fact, only MOCA’s small satellite space at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood has anything specifically planned beyond its current show, “Steve McQueen: Drumroll,” a video installation by the celebrated British artist and filmmaker whose brilliant “12 Years a Slave” won the best picture Oscar this year. After “Drumroll” comes down in late September, MOCA/PDC will present “Cameron: Song for the Witch Woman,” a show of paintings, drawings and ephemera by the nearly mythic Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (1922-1995), a follower of British libertine and occult master Aleister Crowley. The late L.A. artist’s work is little-known now, so the exhibition should be revealing. But even that will be short-lived. After that show ends in January, the schedule for the PDC space is unfilled until the following September. According to a museum spokesman, MOCA hopes to make some relevant announcements by the end of summer. But plainly, there’s a problem. The empty exhibition schedule, which is going to be very difficult to fill, threatens to interrupt the museum’s momentum. After several rocky years, things have been looking up for MOCA in the last many months. A new director, former Dia head Philippe Vergne, is in place. In late May, he named Helen Molesworth to the critically important job of chief curator — a closely watched appointment, given the furor over the forced resignation of her widely admired predecessor, Paul Schimmel, two years ago, and an appointment generally well-received. Molesworth, whose impressive credentials most recently include the top curatorial job at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, begins work this month. It is expected that at least one and perhaps two additional curators will also be named, joining Alma Ruiz and Bennett Simpson on the MOCA roster. The financial picture is also looking considerably better. Trustees have announced pledges of more than $100 million to the museum’s battered endowment, which had been inappropriately spent down in the years leading up to the 2008 national economic collapse, quickly transforming the institution from venerable to vulnerable. With those pledges in hand, board co-chairs Maurice Marciano, a partner in the Guess apparel empire, and philanthropist Lilly Tartikoff Karatz promptly upped the fund-raising goal to $200 million. That endowment number is five times larger than any in MOCA’s history. It is also closer to what an art museum of its stature requires. Internationally recognized artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie returned to the board of trustees in May. Their resignations as artist trustees in the wake of Schimmel’s 2012 ouster were stunning votes of no confidence for the direction then being taken by what was born as “the artists’ museum.” (Edward Ruscha, the fourth artist to quit in 2012, has also voiced renewed enthusiasm, but he has since joined the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.) They have now been joined by painter Mark Grotjahn. Click below to continue reading the article online.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 19:01:08 +0000
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