Chief Curator

The in Washington has announced the resignation of its chief curator, who left as an apparent result of the gallery's decision to cancel a show of work by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The resignation of Jane Livingston was announced by the gallery late Wednesday. She is currently on a six-month leave of absence working, under a Guggenheim fellowship, on a book titled "The New York School: Photography, 1936-1963."

The Hammer Museum has confirmed a change in its curatorial team for the  2014 edition of “Made in L.A.,” the museum's biennial exhibition. Karin Higa has withdrawn from her role as co-curator for health reasons and is being replaced by Connie Butler, the chief curator of drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York who was previously a curator at MOCA in Los Angeles.  Art critic Michael Ned Holte remains a co-curator of the biennial, designed...

In a move that signals serious financial trouble, the Museum of Latin American Art said it has recently laid off its chief curator and slashed its operating budget by nearly 15%. The museum, which is based in Long Beach, said that the culprit was a downturn in financial support from individual donors in recent years. Stuart Ashman, the museum's president and chief executive officer, said in an interview that the museum laid off its chief curator, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, on Monday.

Times are tough at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. In November, the museum said it had laid off its chief curator and slashed its operating budget by nearly 15% to cope with a downturn in donations. On Thursday, the museum will announce a welcome bit of good news. The museum is receiving a $25,000 donation that will go toward the purchase of a bus to be used to provide free tours and art workshops to students from the L.A. area. The donation comes from Hyundai Motor America, which is expected to present the check to museum leaders at a news conference Thursday.

Following sharp criticism from many corners of the art world, the board of trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art has changed course and decided to fill the chief curator position left open by Paul Schimmel's forced resignation in June. A letter sent Monday from members of the board's executive committee - Maria Bell, Laurent Degryse, Cliff Einstein, David Johnson, Lillian Lovelace, Nancy Marks, Steven Mnuchin, Dallas Price-Van Breda and Jeffrey Soros - to fellow trustees informs them of the plan.

Robert McDonald, who had served as the Laguna Beach Museum of Art's chief curator for 11 months, has been dismissed from that post as a "budget saving" move, museum officials said this week. The dismissal took effect June 1. Officials said the museum, which soon will start construction on a $850,000 expansion-renovation of the museum's main site in Laguna Beach, is faced with major "fiscal constraints and reevaluations."

Ann Temkin, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the last five years, has been promoted to the museum's most prestigious curatorial position: chief curator of painting and sculpture. She will succeed John Elderfield, who retired in July. Temkin, who was educated at Harvard and Yale universities, began her career at MoMA in the mid-1980s and was a curator of modern and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1990 to 2003. In her new job, she will oversee her department's installations, acquisitions, exhibitions and other public programs.

Robert McDonald, the Laguna Beach Museum of Art's chief curator for 11 months, has been dismissed as a "budget saving" move, museum officials said this week. The dismissal was effective June 1. The officials said the museum--which soon will start construction on an $850,000 expansion and renovation of the museum's main site in Laguna Beach--is faced with major "fiscal constraints and reevaluations."

Mary Jane Jacob has been named chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Jacob comes to MOCA from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where she served as chief curator for six years.

Whether the focus is international, national or local, an atmosphere of contentious excitement swirls around art biennials, those every-other-year exhibitions of the "best" of contemporary work that most famously take place in New York (at the Whitney Museum of American Art) and Venice, Italy. Why were these artists chosen instead of those artists? What do the works say about the social, political and emotional state of the world? Are they inventive? Stimulating?

Ninety-six works by 26 artists from the United States, Europe and Asia, brought together to illuminate a big - but overlooked - idea. "Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962" is vintage MOCA. A boldly thoughtful, revisionist exhibition that focuses on destruction as a creative force, it's the sort of show that has long distinguished Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. The project is also vintage Paul Schimmel, who organized "Destroy the Picture" and edited its substantial catalog.

Strong support for California's ambitious program to limit greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming was reconfirmed in a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, showing once more the state's celebrated environmental consciousness. So perhaps it's time at least to ring a warning bell about a puzzling situation in Los Angeles' cultural environment, rather than its natural one. At area art museums, the job of chief curator appears to be edging toward the endangered species list.

Signaling serious financial trouble, the Museum of Latin American Art said it has recently laid off its chief curator and slashed its operating budget by nearly 15%. The museum, which is based in Long Beach, said that the culprit was a downturn in financial support from individual donors in recent years. Stuart Ashman, the museum's president and chief executive, said in an interview that the museum laid off its chief curator, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, on Monday. The museum now has two full-time curators.

In a move that signals serious financial trouble, the Museum of Latin American Art said it has recently laid off its chief curator and slashed its operating budget by nearly 15%. The museum, which is based in Long Beach, said that the culprit was a downturn in financial support from individual donors in recent years. Stuart Ashman, the museum's president and chief executive officer, said in an interview that the museum laid off its chief curator, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, on Monday.

[This post has been corrected.] The nominees for the Independent Vision Curatorial Award were announced recently and they include Cesar Garcia, a former senior curator at LAXART in Los Angeles. The biennial award recognizes emerging and mid-career curators from around the world for a recently curated project or exhibition. Independent Curators International, a nonprofit group in New York that produces art events, is the organizer of the award. A winner from among the 15 nominees will be selected by Hans Ulrich Obrist of London's Serpentine Gallery.

Ken Price, the great Los Angeles sculptor who died in February at 77, always operated just below the threshold of first-tier international acclaim. Widely admired by a knowledgeable coterie of collectors, critics and other artists, he had the dubious misfortune to work with clay — an art material that, despite its ancient pedigree, languishes in a modern ghetto. All that is poised to change. "Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective" kicks off the fall art season Sept. 16 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art before traveling to museums in Texas and New York.

Wounded by budgetary cutbacks and bleeding internally from staff reductions, the County Museum of Art has suffered another damaging blow to its once vigorous image. A messy lawsuit filed by one of its chief curators has made already low staff morale sink even deeper, and the museum's administration is facing sharp criticism from the art world for mistreating a longtime staple of the local and international arts community.

Ninety-six works by 26 artists from the United States, Europe and Asia, brought together to illuminate a big - but overlooked - idea. "Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962" is vintage MOCA. A boldly thoughtful, revisionist exhibition that focuses on destruction as a creative force, it's the sort of show that has long distinguished Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. The project is also vintage Paul Schimmel, who organized "Destroy the Picture" and edited its substantial catalog.

Following sharp criticism from many corners of the art world, the board of trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art has changed course and decided to fill the chief curator position left open by Paul Schimmel's forced resignation in June. A letter sent Monday from members of the board's executive committee - Maria Bell, Laurent Degryse, Cliff Einstein, David Johnson, Lillian Lovelace, Nancy Marks, Steven Mnuchin, Dallas Price-Van Breda and Jeffrey Soros - to fellow trustees informs them of the plan.