Founding Chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles
A NEW MUSEUM HAS AN INSTANT Touch
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Nov 27, 1983
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5 years agone the need for a museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles was no more than a discipline of conversation. One conversation, even so, happened to be between Mayor Tom Bradley and a prominent Los Angeles collector, Marcia Weisman, and it eventually led to a blue- ribbon commission, a museum site, a museum staff, a proposed building, and finally to last Sunday, when the Museum of Contemporary Fine art in Los Angeles opened its doors with an all-encompassing exhibition called ''The Start Prove: Painting and Sculpture From Eight Collections, 1940-80.'' The long- anticipated, much publicized, already controversial museum of art was opened - and its bear upon on Los Angeles is beginning to be felt immediately.
At the kickoff-night ceremony, the chairman of the museum's lath of trustees Eli Broad, said that the opening of MOCA marked ''a new cultural era for Los Angeles,'' a city that, as ane person observed, had been unsure of itself. The museum is an of import component in what is a period of major cultural expansion - an expansion that includes the vast Getty museum, an enlarged Canton Museum of Fine art, proposals for an expanded music heart, and the Olympics.
The museum which opened concluding week is, to be precise, a newly-recycled 55,000-square-foot interim facility called ''The Temporary Contemporary.'' Construction on the permanent 100,000 square-foot $22-million facility, designed past the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, started last month but will not be completed until 1986. The Temporary Contemporary volition permit the museum to operate at full scale: the two warehouses leased to the museum past the city have more exhibition infinite than the future facility on Bunker Loma, and the voluminous spaces within are remarkably fraternal for large-scale fine art.
Robert J. Fitzpatrick, president of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, said that the museum had started to alter the artistic community in Los Angeles fifty-fifty without a building. ''I call up it was a masterpiece of Conceptual fine art,'' he said. ''Without a building, a collection, or any shows, the museum had already started to happen.'' And Richard Koshalek, the museum's director, added, ''Information technology was exactly what nosotros needed. We had to do something. We had to start.'' The Temporary is largely the inspiration of Mr. Koshalek.
Just the museum as well represents an of import turning point for the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles - it has already become peradventure the most charismatic building block of what Edward Helfeld, administrator of the Los Angeles community redevelopment agency calls ''a complete downtown.'' The bodily location of the Temporary Contemporary is potentially brilliant, if unexpected: at the edge of a warehouse district in which many Los Angeles artists work, and inside walking altitude of downtown's substantial daytime working populations - a natural audience already targeted by the museum. The immediate community surrounding the museum is Little Tokyo - a tightly knit Japanese community whose onetime stores and restaurants institute one of Los Angeles'southward all-time walking environments.
On Nov. 17, the museum inaugurated the building with a Shinto purification ceremony, a ritual often held at groundbreakings in Little Tokyo, as a symbol of common recognition between the Japanese community and the museum. As an event, the anniversary also captured the character of Los Angeles, and exemplified how the museum would operate within information technology. The ceremony occurred under a chain- link awning designed by the Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, built across a dead-stop street rededicated past the city as an outdoor antechamber for the side by side museum.
That the inaugural ceremony was conducted outside almost symbolizes the extroversion that Mr. Koshalek brings to the museum which will, he said, take a potent outreach program in the community. There will be works of art outside the museum walls, both in the city and in the public media - already Maria Nordman created a piece of work within an one-time gas station near the museum. The museum staff plans to impress an 8-folio newspaper to be distributed downtown. ''We will apply the public media to reach a full general audition,'' says the director.
The warehouses themselves have been adapted by Mr. Gehry into a museum that retains the informality and accessibility of the original structures - the architect has left the ceiling structure exposed, saving some of the warehouses' machinery. He added lights, and cleaned and painted some surfaces, but generally tried to leave the base of operations raw.
Many visitors were surprised at how substantial and effective this temporary facility is. Robert Rauschenberg said ''I've never seen a more than beautiful installation.'' The director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art wondered how the museum would be able to somewhen operate both the permanent building on Bunker Hill and this one - assuming the city renews the five-year charter on the warehouses.
Any in the Temporary or the permanent facility, people interested in Los Angeles'southward contemporary art will now, at terminal, accept a single place in which to see it. Mary Norris, a Los Angeles art consultant who helped initiate the museum in its earliest stages, said that Los Angeles artists volition have a reference museum to consult, as well as a forum for their own work.
Simply Fred Croton, full general managing director of Los Angeles's cultural affairs department, cautioned that at that place is a danger the museum might go an international merely non a local success if information technology does not succeed in establishing a broad public base. He said Los Angeles residents volition ''have to acquire to come up downtown.''
While Mr. Koshalek and the museum have been criticized for a as well- heavy reliance on public relations - some of the news packets have featured Hollywood stars - some people feel this is a strategy necessary to place the museum firmly in the public's awareness. On the museum's first day, it succeeded in attracting 2,000 visitors.
For Mr. Koshalek risk is the point of running a contemporary museum. Final calendar month MOCA staged a trip the light fantastic operation, ''Available Light,'' in the still uncompleted museum space. Deputed by the museum, the performance received poor reviews, only it demonstrated that the museum is willing to experiment and to adventure failure.
In dissimilarity, ''The Offset Show'' is a more than conservative effort probable to delight more people - it is fabricated up of almost 150 paintings, sculptures and installations from eight individual collections. The show sets the menstruation in which the museum will specialize - 1940 to the present - and information technology establishes that California piece of work of international caliber volition be well represented. For many visitors who attended the openings, it was surprising that work they had never seen in California had plant its way into prestigious strange collections. In that location were as well many works that had never been seen in Los Angeles, for lack of a suitable place and occasion. ''Where else do you go to meet an Orr, a Flavin, a Wheeler,'' said Mrs. Weisman, ''along with a Newman, a Smith, a Schnabel? This may become the MOMA of the W Coast, merely in time there will be museums that are the MOCA'due south of the S and the East.''
The manager says that the permanent drove will be used very actively in the permanent building with many viewing changes. Julia Dark-brown, the curator of ''The First Bear witness,'' remarked that ''The key to remaining contemporary is staying in contact with artists. I go to studios a lot. Many artists in Los Angeles work in a certain corporeality of isolation - their piece of work needs to be supported and shown.'' The curator intends to involve artists in the museum straight by commissioning work, consulting them on installations, and by hiring architects, graphic artists and established writers to blueprint shows and new publications.
Mr. Koshalek, in fact, tends to run into every museum action every bit a potential art opportunity. There will, for example, be an evening motorcar shuttle betwixt the Marking Taper Forum and the museum, and during that 10-minute in-between time, the motorcar will be the stage for a mini-play. The museum is now developing a program of commissioned plays to take place within the car.
While the museum may have many intentions for the future, Miss Brown says, ''For the museum not to accept all the answers and not to ascertain itself at this point is very important. What we are will define itself through what we do. There are no rules notwithstanding.''
If there are no rules, there is already a tone virtually MOCA - one of energy and optimism. The director - merely an 60 minutes earlier he was to change for the Friday opening into a dinner jacket hanging in his function - was already anticipating the new permanent facility. ''And roughly three years from today,'' he said, ''it'south Bunker Hill.''
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