The L.A. museum community has been riven with issues around MOCA, its near-bankruptcy two years ago, the $30-million bailout by founding chairman Eli Broad, and a contemplated merger with Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The assumption is that, like any museum head, Deitch will have to be a hybrid who can raise money and put on shows without alienating scholars and artists or his board and prime benefactor Broad. He is already talking about reinventing MOCA's store.
Deitch will also need to harness his personal charm.
Even art dealers who don't share Deitch's interest in performance art or in his annual Art Parade that attracts naked men in high heels find him good company.
Take Richard Feigen, who sells Old Masters on Manhattan's Upper East Side: "I don't like Jeffrey's taste. I don't like Koons or Damien Hirst. I don't even like Warhol.
"But I like Jeffrey," said Feigen, declaring him "a straight shooter" and man of his word who likes conversation.
These are surely qualifications for a museum director who needs to persuade a lot of rich people to write checks.
He might do well to start with Lynda Resnick. She said she was a founding member of MOCA but last year withdrew her support of the museum over the debate about whether it should merge with LACMA, where she is a trustee. With her husband, Stewart, Resnick is a major philanthropist and art collector as well as a successful entrepreneur. They donated $45 million to build a new exhibition space at LACMA that is scheduled to open this year, plus an extra $10 million for art.
Resnick said she was working through her initial skepticism about Deitch's for-profit resume, but that she hoped he could bring a little N.Y. "magic" to the showbiz capital.
"It's a brave step and an interesting one. . . . Art is the highest achievement of man," said the woman who in her Beverly Hills living room has a monument-sized statue of Napoleon. "If they can do it on Grand Avenue, the way they do on Wilshire, I'll be happy for them. I remain open-minded and, I guess, I might be happy to open my pocketbook."
geraldine.baum@latimes.com
