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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... View full entry
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.
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
“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.” — LA Times
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... View full entry
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.
— LA Times
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. — news.usc.edu
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. View full entry
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. — citylab
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... View full entry
“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.” — theguardian.com
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. — LA Weekly
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... View full entry
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. ... View full entry
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. — Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times
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. — la.curbed.com
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.
— latimes.com
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.
— latimes.com
Facing delays in finishing the installation of the show, the show will be canceled, or, at best, delayed. View full entry
Being a successful collector or dealer does not qualify one to make substantial decisions towards our collective cultural patrimony. — art&education
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... View full entry
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. — Heather MacDonald, City Journal
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... View full entry