CONTRIBUTING to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's acquisitions fund is one thing. Throwing thousands of dollars into a pot and helping to decide how to spend it is something else again. But that's what goes on once a year when members of the museum's Collectors Committee gather for a weekend gala and ponder tough choices offered by curators.
Listen to Robert T. Singer, curator of Japanese art, pitching a curiously charming approximation of an elephant, carved circa 1300 by a sculptor who had never laid eyes on the real thing. Singer has been making proposals to the committee for 18 years and knows how to push emotional buttons while relating appropriate facts. He confides that the Japanese dealer selling the ancient wood sculpture misjudged its age and priced it too low -- at $126,100 -- but kept his word when he discovered the mistake.
Calling the elephant "our guy" and using what LACMA Director Michael Govan calls "the puppy dog strategy," Singer notes that the elephant is "a composite creature" with the rear end of a water buffalo and the head of a basset hound. He flashes images of a live pooch and the sculpture on a screen, observing that both animals are smiling. Then he zeroes in on details of the elephant -- "laugh lines around the eyes," "winsome dimples on the knees," "wonderful tail."
It's a dazzling performance, but Singer has plenty of competition from eight of his colleagues, each offering something special.
What's a community-minded committee member to do?
Vote for Jennifer Steinkamp's computer-animated, video-projected, wraparound wall of flowers or the jade pendant of a bird-beaked deity worn by an ancient Maya king?
The 19th century French academic painting of "St. George and the Monster" by Gustave Surand or the 17th century Indian cabinet crafted of rosewood with ivory floral inlays?
The unique set of Agnes Martin's 1973 prints that present 30 ways of constructing a grid, or the 19th century Japanese woman's robe, elaborately embroidered in silk and gold?
It's worse than apples and oranges. And the curators -- vying for part of a pot that has reached almost $1 million this year -- don't make the decisions easier. Shameless promoters all, they advocate their candidates in slick PowerPoint presentations that combine scholarship and salesmanship. Each potential acquisition will fill a gaping hole in LACMA's collection, they say. Priced from $100,000 to $220,000, each work is a bargain, an acquisition opportunity not to be missed. The museum and the people of Los Angeles \o7need \f7this particular contemporary Latin American abstract painting, this modern Austrian tea set, so finely wrought of silver and ivory.
