Los Angeles Museum Of Contemporary Art

Los Angeles lost one of its most stalwart advocates of contemporary and modern art over the weekend when Marcia Simon Weisman died. Before her death of a stroke, at 73, she had spearheaded so many projects, inspired so many collectors, bought so many artworks and expressed so many opinions about art that she touched nearly everyone in the field. If you didn't know her as the visionary behind Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, you heard her appeals to support the museum.

The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Thursday that it has created the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer and hired David M. Galligan to fill it. Galligan, who began work Tuesday, will oversee the business side of the museum, including finance, operations and administration, reporting to director Jeffrey Deitch, who joined the museum last year. Galligan worked at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from 1986 to 2002 as that museum's COO and treasurer.

BASED on his work from the past dozen years, you might expect Takashi Murakami to be the illegitimate love child of Tinky Winky and Minnie Mouse, as home-schooled in Amida Buddhism. Or maybe the test-tube spawn of E.T. and Little Annie Fanny, given to unexpected scholarly interest in the erudite traditions of Japanese screens and scrolls. He's neither, of course.

At the first Salon by the Shore to benefit the Museum of Contemporary Art, museum director Jeffrey Deitch introduced internationally recognized artist Doug Aitken and offered some explanations for L.A.'s ability to create so many great artists. Among other considerations, he named the landscape, climate and intellectual foundation of the city. "We're so lucky to have all this," said event co-chairwoman Lilly Tartikoff Karatz. "At one end of the city we have a great contemporary art museum and then, at the other end, we have the Pacific Ocean.

IT'S the tuft of hair on the chin, the relief of a goatee on the smooth aluminum surface of the face, that gives the character's identity away. Otherwise, the 17-foot-high statue of a big-eyed "Oval Buddha" could be just another of Takashi Murakami's cute creations: a wandering space alien, perhaps, or a member of a tribe of ghosts. The character sits like Humpty Dumpty on the lip of a flower vase, his oversized head far too big for his tiny torso. He has a potbelly. His spine sags.

NEW KID IN TOWN: And then there's Paul Schimmel, who left Newport Harbor Art Museum 17 months ago to be chief curator for Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. He was captivated by the challenge of a museum with 20,000 more square feet of display space. Today he realizes that size presents its own problems: "A bigger ship is harder to turn."

"My colleagues . . . are all moaning about the high prices for works of art and the changes in the tax laws that have had a great impact on museums and the building of collections. But I don't think it's totally negative. What does a museum do? It rethinks priorities. Where will it put its attention if this continues? On younger artists--a very good thing because the works are still reasonable in price." --Richard Koshalek, director of Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, in Artweek.

Artists seeking their big break should prepare their slides for entry into the third annual Artists' Liaison competition. Organized by a Los Angeles group of the same name, the Artists' Liaison seeks "to promote both emerging and established artists," according to director Gene Fulmer.

Some artists spend years trying to get their work on the market--longer, even, to see it displayed in a major museum. For five Highland Park fifth-graders, both happened almost overnight. Each of the Loreto Street School students spent two class periods in July designing Christmas card covers for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.

In an ambitious move to secure the future of its creative mission, Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art has launched a $25-million fund-raising drive. Announcing the campaign on Thursday--with half of the money already pledged--MOCA Director Richard Koshalek said that most of the funds will go into an endowment to support the museum's programs. The move was inspired by an economic and political climate that has threatened arts funding for the past few years, Koshalek said.

The dealer had heard about the two young artists who spent the occasional evening ransacking a hotel room, ripping apart phone books, writing on the walls and getting stoned. Even the artists weren't sure this was art. But Jeffrey Deitch was. He handed them keys to his SoHo gallery and for almost a week they crammed it with 2,000 shredded phone books, and stabbed a broomstick and broken wine bottles in the walls for "Nest," a show that was to remain there for a month. It didn't even survive the raucous opening night party.

Why does the Museum of Contemporary Art's board of trustees dislike art museums? That's the uncomfortable question hanging in the air as the nation's premier contemporary art museum names Jeffrey Deitch, 57, its fourth director in 30 years. In selecting new leadership, trustees shunned candidates from an international museum roster that has grown vast in recent decades. Instead they reached deep into the New York art market to find a director for the critically admired, financially strapped institution.

Jeffrey Deitch stepped into a gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Monday where a photographer was set to take his portrait in front of a painting in the shape of a bull's-eye by Kenneth Noland. But Deitch, 57, had another idea for a backdrop: He suggested "A Lot to Like," James Rosenquist's massive 1962 canvas that occupied another wall in the gallery. "Jim's a friend," Deitch said. The offhand remark illustrates the assets and potential drawbacks that New Yorker Deitch, appointed Monday as MOCA's new director, brings to his new role in Los Angeles and the larger art world.

L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art says it will name its new director Monday, and one of the names in play is that of Jeffrey Deitch, a high-flying New York City art dealer who, if chosen, would represent a break with art museum convention. Neither the museum, nor arts patron Eli Broad -- whose $30-million pledge was the cornerstone of the museum's rescue from financial peril in late 2008 -- would comment on the finalists for the job. "We've interviewed about 13 people and no decision has been made yet, by either the search committee or the board, but we hope that will happen soon," Broad said.

When it comes to extracting free labor from famous cinematic figures, it would be hard to top Francesco Vezzoli. The Italian video artist's output over the last 12 years reflects his ability to get highly paid cinematic talent to work without pay. Vezzoli's enlistees so far have included Helen Mirren, Sharon Stone, Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Sonia Braga, Marianne Faithfull, Natalie Portman, Roman Polanski, Michelle...

Bifocals resting on his nose, Chris Burden mounted the scrawny Benelli motorcycle and kicked the machine to life. Revving the motor in first gear to make sure the 41-year-old beast would stay awake, he upshifted to second, then third, forcing the rear wheel of the tiny bike to spin faster and faster against the big wheel with which it was making contact. With the motorcycle revved to 50 miles per hour, Burden's graying hair fluttered from the wind generated by the enormous metal flywheel.

Like most major art museums, Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art gets a rush of art gifts at the end of each year, when collectors typically make tax-deductible contributions. It now appears that 1999 was a particularly good year for MOCA--and not only because of tax breaks. Of the 120 works added to the museum's collection last year, 17 pieces were donated in honor of Jeremy Strick, who succeeded director Richard Koshalek last July.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles has received a gift of 123 works by 78 artists from E. Blake Byrne, a MOCA trustee and retired television executive. The bonanza of paintings, sculptures, drawings, videos and photographs is the largest group of artworks donated by a private collector in the museum's 25-year history.

A Museum of Contemporary Art trustee who left the board last year amid revelations of the museum's dire financial problems said that his confidence in the leadership of philanthropist Eli Broad, whose Broad Foundation offered the museum a bailout gift of $30 million in December, has led to his decision to rejoin the board. On Thursday the museum announced it has raised nearly $60 million, including Broad's gift, since December. Included in that announcement was news that former music industry executive Gilbert B. Friesen and art collector and restaurateur Peter Morton, co-founder of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, have rejoined the board.

Leaders of L.A.'s financially troubled Museum of Contemporary Art said Friday that they have crafted a balanced budget for the coming fiscal year -- but only by sacrificing four planned exhibitions and 17 more jobs, including two of seven curators. They hope that a fall exhibition drawn solely from MOCA's acclaimed collection of post-World War II art will be a blockbuster and signal that the museum's turnaround from last year's near-collapse is well underway.