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USC School of Architecture hosts Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Johanna Burton ahead of PST ART on Sept. 9th

2024-09-05T14:03:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by USC School of Architecture

Next Monday, September 9th, the USC School of Architecture, in partnership with USC Visions & Voices and The Museum of Contemporary Art, will host a conversation between Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson and MOCA director Johanna Burton to mark the inception of the third Pacific Standard Time Art exhibition in Los Angeles.

Eliasson is the subject of an upcoming MOCA exhibition, Olafur Eliasson: Open, which runs through July 6th, 2025, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA downtown space.

Olafur Eliasson and Johanna Burton. Image (Olafur Eliasson): Louise Yeowart, 2024, (Johanna Burton): Erin Leland

He and Burton will talk about the process for his work, which he does not view as completed until it engages an audience. Eliasson’s work has been exhibited this year at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and Istanbul Modern, displaying the same confluence of science, art, and technology that forms the basis of this year’s PST ART: A...

Billionaire business man, art collector and philanthropist, Eli Broad, passes away at 87

2021-05-05T18:05:00-04:00

Eli Broad, a businessman and philanthropist whose vast fortune, extensive art collection and zeal for civic improvement helped reshape the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, died on Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. [...] Mr. Broad (pronounced “brode”) made billions in the home-building and insurance businesses and spent a significant part of his wealth trying to make Los Angeles one of the world’s pre-eminent cultural capitals.

Broad is best known for his extensive philanthropic work focused on public education, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts. He, along with his wife Edythe, has given more than $4 billion to support these efforts. Their work has placed them among the leading philanthropists in the United States.

His lasting legacy on Los Angeles is considerable with work including the creation and preservation of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the creation of the Broad, a $140 million art museum that he financed himself that features his collection of more than 2,000 contemporary works, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in which he granted $50 million to complete the project.

In recent years, Broad has dedicated a majority of his time to his philanthropic work via his foundations, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation. With assets of $2.4 billion, they advocate for public education reform and promote the revitalization of Los Ang...

A $10-million gift to MOCA allows for free admission to the museum

2019-05-20T18:28:00-04:00

“We are not aiming at having more visitors or larger attendance, but we’re aiming at being more accessible, at having open doors,” he said in an interview. “As a civic institution, we should be like a library, where you can just walk in.”

With its recent celebration of turning 40, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles received a generous gift of $10-million from MOCA Board of Trustees President Carolyn Powers. The goal of the museum's future is to aid and assist in a "civic-minded" vision for the museum, according to MOCA Director, Klaus Biesenbach.

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Image © MOCA

General adult admission to the museum ranged between $8 - $15, with free admission on Thursday evenings. However, after receiving this generous donation from Powers, this change is a significant step for the museum. According to board chairwoman Maria Seferian, "This is a game-changer, one of the greatest gifts our museum has had in a while," she said. "We've thought for a long time how we could go free and make the museum more inclusive, and now we have the opportunity to, so we're so excited."

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles project drawings. Image © Arata Isozaki

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles ...

MOCA to close its Pacific Design Center satellite

2019-01-16T13:28:00-05:00

The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Wednesday that it will close its Pacific Design Center location next month after exhibiting architecture and design at the West Hollywood satellite for more than 20 years. MOCA will continue an architecture and design program, but at its Grand Avenue and Geffen Contemporary locations in downtown L.A., board Chairwoman Maria Seferian said in a statement.

MacDonald Becket, influential Los Angeles architect, dies at age 89

2017-12-07T18:18:00-05:00

MacDonald Becket ’52, former chairman of the board and CEO of the architecture firm Welton Becket and Associates, died in Phoenix, AZ. He was 89. Becket, who graduated from the USC School of Architecture, was a driving force in the development of architecture in Los Angeles. Two of his major roles in California were coordinating the master planning and architectural implementations of the 260-acre Century City project and in the successful renovation of the state capitol building in Sacramento.

Among his many achievements, Becket was a founding contributor to MoCA's Architectural and Design Endowment in Los Angeles. He also designed the personal homes of former US presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford attesting to Becket's far reaching influence.

Dear Museums: Stop Making Nonsense

2015-04-18T16:42:00-04:00

In one sense, spectacle shows represent acute risk aversion on the part of museums. It's cousin to the disease that has sacked Hollywood, where only remakes and sequels promise the margins that justify a global blockbuster production—so only remakes and sequels get greenlighted.

A comment in facebook from Vasif Kortun acutely puts the question in words.

"A question rises now in Indiana: Can a pizzeria (or pharmacy, or pediatrics practice) discriminate against LGBTQ families (or seniors, or children) because the business as an entity feels it has a religious obligation to do so? Museums might have a say in this argument, pressing at the boundaries of the public sphere with provocative art or exploring its depths with nuanced installations. The same goes for the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations, which push on the pillars of American civic identity. Museums avoided them. (What's on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art? "Dream Cars" opens May 3. Thank goodness for Indy MOCA.)"

Los Angeles cultural boom gives city’s artists spaces they can call home

2014-10-27T13:30:00-04:00

“People used to complain that people went to New York to buy what they could buy in LA,” said Kathy Halbreich, the associate director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “I don’t think that happens anymore. I think there’s a recognition that the city matters, that the people aren’t just there for the weather. You see a level of ambition that’s been ratcheted up.”

MOCA Announces New Performance Festival for Downtown LA

2014-08-28T21:02:00-04:00

This month, audiences will be able to check out the first program to emerge from Vergne's nascent administration: Step and Repeat, a multidisciplinary festival of performing arts, takes place at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA over four Saturday evenings, beginning Sept. 13 [...] Step and Repeat will feature a unique nightly lineup of poetry readings, noise/experimental music, performance art, stand-up comedy, live bands and deejays, all presented side by side.

The news that performance and other public programming will return to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is a sign for some that the new director, Philippe Vergne, is already returning the embattled museum to its former strength. Vergne replaced the former director Jeffrey Deitch, whose stewarding of the institution provoked controversy and ended in his resignation. Some contended that Deitch oriented the museum too much around pop culture and celebrity, with exhibits like "Rebel" featuring the work of James France and "Art in the Streets" about graffiti. When he announced a show about disco, prestigious artists like Ed Ruscha and Barbara Kruger resigned from the museum board.

MOCA has a long history of being an "artist's museum," due to the active and experimental role of artists in its programming. For example, the ongoing MOCAtv showcases the works of artists who have not necessarily fully broken into the mainstream, such as the recent episodes by the Jogging or Ed Fornieles...

Editor's Picks #323

2013-07-09T12:56:00-04:00

News

Benjamin Paulker interviewed Frank Gehry for Foreign Policy regarding his first project in the Arab World. sameolddoctor was amused "It is funny that Gehry thinks of himself as a humanitarian" but pvbeeber wondered "Not sure why everyone is giving him such a hard time. What other architects working in the Middle East would hire a human rights lawyer to make sure that workers are treated fairly? Gehry's also one of the few starchitects who bothers to pay his interns".

citizen took exception to the "Epiphanies from Frank Gehry" title "I'm not giving FOG a hard time. Bully for him...I'm giving the Archinect editors --with whom I generally concur, but who often title these little pieces ridiculously-- the hard time". However as Ryan Griffin noted "citizen.... the title given to this page is the title of the article to which it is referring..."

Christopher Hawthorne reviewed the new architecture exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art - concluding "When architects de...

LA Times' Christopher Hawthorne calls MOCA's revamped architecture show "a model of insularity"

2013-07-01T17:26:00-04:00

Now that the exhibition has opened at the museum's Geffen Contemporary branch in Little Tokyo, where it will limp along through the middle of September as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents series, it's clear that it is the product of an architectural ruling class in Los Angeles that is not so much dysfunctional as increasingly insular.

See the MOCA U-Hauls Full of Ingenious Architectural Solutions - LA Architects Making the World a Better Place

2013-06-06T18:58:00-04:00

A squadron of U-Hauls descended on the parking lot in front of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA last weekend, setting up a pop-up architecture exhibition in the first in a series of events called On the Road. The U-Hauls served as temporary displays for the work of up-and-coming, experimental architecture practices here in Los Angeles--where architecture businesses are known for being experimental, even if they don't often get a chance to deploy those innovations in Los Angeles.

Gehry pulls out of MOCA's 'A New Sculpturalism' exhibition

2013-05-03T16:11:00-04:00

Frank Gehry has pulled out of a major architecture exhibition set to open June 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a move that could force the show to find a new venue or face the prospect of being canceled altogether. The exhibition... is an exploration of the last 25 years of Los Angeles architecture, with work by Gehry, Thom Mayne, Michael Maltzan, Barbara Bestor, Lorcan O'Herlihy and many younger architects.

MOCA architecture show, funded by Getty, could face cancellation

2013-05-02T12:46:00-04:00

The exhibition was planned as an exploration of the last 25 years of Los Angeles architecture, with work by Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Michael Maltzan, Barbara Bestor and many younger architects. It was funded in part by a Getty Foundation grant of $445,000. No other single show in the PSTP series received a grant as large, according to a Getty press release. A 272-page catalog, co-published by Rizzoli, is already complete.

Facing delays in finishing the installation of the show, the show will be canceled, or, at best, delayed.

Something out of Nothing: Marcia Tucker, Jeffrey Deitch and the De-regulation of the Contemporary-Museum Model

2012-04-01T22:49:00-04:00

Being a successful collector or dealer does not qualify one to make substantial decisions towards our collective cultural patrimony.

art&education publishes an excellent paper by Nizan Shaked. As the title suggests, it discusses and exposes the forces and conditions behind this billion dollar industry that created by power brokers and billionaire businessman and their art advisers, museum directors and junior collector class, trail of money and more importantly, manipulating and exploiting our collective cultural patrimony.

Witnessing, critiquing dozens of naive and exploited museum design projects by architecture students, I can highly recommend an article that needs to be read and understood by all the students and their instructors while doing such projects. If anything, it will make you understand the destination of your project better and possibly change your direction and delivery.

Silence=Death.

Jeffrey Deitch can't even please the neo-con's

2011-04-25T12:46:38-04:00

Deitch’s Disneyesque barrio gave New Yorkers who would never dream of getting off the subway north of 96th Street that delightful frisson of proximity to the underclass, just as the graffiti cult provides affluent viewers with the sense that they are in touch with authentic ghetto culture.

Here is a totally hilarious, angry finger-wag from the libertarian/neo-con City Journal. It calls out the "petite" Jeffrey Deitch and LA's Museum of Contemporary Art because, apparently, ensconcing graffiti *within* the museum walls is not enough for the author as a containment of the "vandalism." The cranky author calls out Deitch, MOCA, and graf artists on their "hypocrisy," but why complain? They're doing exactly what she wants! (And by the way, she calls Obey artist Shepard Fairey Jeffrey Deitch's "poodle.") [Via @a_small_lab] Radical Graffiti Chic by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Spring 2011

The Problem With Vandalism

2011-04-21T19:06:43-04:00

...a local Street Artist tweaks the nose of MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” with some actual Street Art in situ...

The Problem With Vandalism is MOCA itself!

Jeffrey Deitch: We Need Bail Bonds!

2011-04-20T14:57:30-04:00

The Los Angeles Police Department believes one of two French nationals detained on suspicion of vandalism near MOCA's Little Tokyo gallery was the famed street artist known as "Space Invader."

LAPD demonstrating real great skills. Jeffrey Deitch, already known as Mr. Urban Maintenance for censoring commissioned artist Blu, is no where to be seen, except to say "If you harness your talent you can be in a museum some day, make a contribution and a living from it." What a real piece of work, this guy.

Art as MOCA-latte: APPROVED-DISAPPROVED

2011-04-09T15:50:48-04:00

When Los Angeles MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch ordered the removal of artist Blu‘s mural, which he commissioned, from the wall of his museum, he was quickly accused of censorship by various folks in the art community. In response to his act, an anonymous street artist put up a wheatpasted mural near MOCA that depicted Deitch as the Ayatollah Khomeini, dressed in traditional garb, holding a dripping paint roller with outstretched arm – fresh from removing Blu’s mural from the museum’s wall.

MOCA further sucks it up to its Blu(es) and PR's a Tea Party like survey on what art 'you'd' suck up to. Peviously

No Blu Wash

2010-12-17T14:56:46-05:00

MOCA commissions a mural from Blu and than finds it offensive and whitewashes it. Artist says it is cencorship. The museum director says he was in Miami art fair when it was painted. latimes
MOCA commissions a mural from Blu and than finds it offensive and whitewashes it. Artist says it is cencorship. The museum director says he was in Miami art fair when it was painted. latimes