What really happened at MOCA? This afternoon’s twist is that MOCA co-chair Maria Bell told the Huffington Post: “I can absolutely confirm that Paul was not fired. He resigned.” Bell goes on to praise Schimmel, say he will continue to work with MOCA as a consulting curator, and to regret “that there was misinformation in press.” (At top, Broad, Schimmel, and Deitch in happier times, via Art Fag City)
That contradicts the L.A. Times’ unnamed sources who say Schimmel was fired. It sounds like it might have been a “You can’t fire me, I quit” deal, and Bell is splitting semantic hairs in the name of damage control.
Schimmel isn’t talking so far, beyond two bland sentences in the MOCA press release (that read like a hostage’s forced confession?) Neither are Deitch and other board members saying anything. Weird semi-exception: On Monday, two days before Eli Broad (allegedly) called Schimmel into his office, his @UnreasonableEli feed of fortune-cookie business advice tweeted, “Hiring the best young employees is a lot easier than keeping them.”
Unfortunately, it is a fact that Schimmel is gone, not to be replaced, and Deitch will be taking on a bigger curatorial role—so says MOCA. ”I think they completely destroyed that museum,” Joe Goode said. His opinion is not just the median one, it’s the only one. As far as I can tell no one, on an Internet that thrives on controversy and contrarianism, is making the case that Schimmel’s departure is anything less than a disaster for MOCA. Intentionally or not, this time Deitch has delivered something the art world hardly ever sees: unanimity.
UPDATE. Deitch told the Wall Street Journal, “He resigned. He was not fired.” Schimmel had no comment.
Tags: Eli Broad, Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA, Paul Schimmel
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I do. It was destroyed long ago, after tricking count Panza out of his collection,then not showing it anymore. Sitting in the back collecting dust while its then director took a whiz behind them, often apparently intoxicated from a source who used to work there and wrote me.
that first show at the TempContemp(t) as it was called, was its only great one, with beautiful natural light soon ruined by Gehrys boring and bland layout trying to be cute and clever. Not.
Man more likely destroys the art in nature than adds to it. And so, manmade beauty is rare, and nonexistent at MoCA.,
This is just a family squabble, inbreds fighting for mom and dads attention($$$). It didnt need to be destroyed truly, it was never alive. Go South to Nuestro Pueblo to find life, Death, Purpose, this has none, just sterilized dreams of grandeur, Don Quixote without the charm. Robber barons mausoleum, with Broad as its Pharoah.
The LA Times article notes: “Although Schimmel is known for staging popular shows like a 2007 retrospective of the artist Takashi Murakami, he also developed serious, research-driven exhibitions that took on entire art movements.”
I know that Broad has been bothered by the low attendance figures for MOCA, probably heightened by his awareness of the huge visitor count that museums like the Modern in New York receive each year. He said as much in an interview he gave last year.
Then there’s the matter of things like one of the comments in the LA Times message board mentioning that Schimmel is known for being difficult to work with. Did he also favor on too many occasions overly obscure, esoteric type of art shows that Broad expressed some wariness about — in terms of its impact on prospective visitors — in that same published interview from awhile back?
But a lot of contemporary art in general, including that which Broad likes to collect, has become to much of the public an increasingly esoteric and unapproachable (or a hipster for hipster’s sake) thing through the decades. Too much in the direction of “hey, anyone can do something like that! That art doesn’t look like it takes much talent to achieve.”
There may be plenty of blame to go all away around, and everyone has to take some responsibility for the current state of MOCA, including a city (and its people) that originally was notorious for not being exactly a cultural nirvana.