Don't forget MOCA

The redevelopment of downtown L.A.'s Grand Avenue is finally set to begin next month, but so far no one has brought up one of the project's glaring flaws: The developers mention the Museum of Contemporary Art in their marketing materials, but they don't treat it as an asset to be maximized. Any plan for redeveloping Grand Avenue should include expanding MOCA. No American contemporary art museum is more in need of additional gallery space, and none is better positioned to benefit from the kindness of strangers. And there are reasons why the Grand Avenue team should be interested in MOCA too.

Unfortunately, as Bunker Hill is set to grow up all around the museum, MOCA is stuck with the status quo: the same building and gallery space it has had since 1986. The failure of the city, the county, developers, philanthropists and MOCA's board to make sure that the museum grows with its neighborhood is unfortunate.

First, it's important to understand why MOCA deserves to expand. It is America's top museum of contemporary art, the period that runs from roughly 1965 forward. No museum creates better or more scholarly contemporary exhibitions. MOCA also has a strong permanent collection, but because of the limited gallery space, it's rarely on view.

If MOCA had more than 40,000 square feet of exhibition space like Minneapolis' Walker Art Center or 60,000 square feet like Washington's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, it could not only present great shows, it could show off its world-class collection. MOCA's Grand Avenue outpost has just 24,500 square feet of gallery space. (Its temporary exhibition outpost in Little Tokyo, the Geffen Contemporary, isn't climate-controlled, a requirement for collection installations.)

An expanded MOCA ought to appeal to everyone involved. What the city, county and developers need are reasons for people to visit MOCA's stretch of downtown and to commit to living in a new billion-dollar development. (So far, the plan seems to be to place something like the Grove across from Disney Hall and hope that will attract "upscale" visitors. Yawn.)

The best reason to visit MOCA's neighborhood is MOCA. Currently, about 1,000 people visit MOCA each day, a figure that includes those who visit the museum's blockbuster exhibitions at the Geffen. MOCA's better-developed peers, though, do bigger numbers: The Walker and the Hirshhorn both draw more than 2,000 visitors a day. A symbiotic relationship between an expanded, destination museum and a redeveloped Grand Avenue would attract visitors to both. So why hasn't anyone done anything about it?