hyde or die

“It was Schimmel who put the Louis Vuitton boutique in “©Takashi Murakami” (2007), and he got more flak for it than Deitch did for his Mercedes product placement this spring. From 1992, when Schimmel championed Robert Williams’ hot rod culture art in “Helter Skelter,” to 2011, when he had punk bands X, the Dead Kennedies, and the Avengers perform for “Under the Big Black Sun,” Schimmel’s exhibitions have regularly explored youth culture, celebrity, sex, commercialism, the low brow, and shock value. Now obviously Schimmel and Deitch don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but it’s not like they’re Superman and Bizarro. Their differences are more nuanced than the way that some are framing it.”

—

William Poundstone

I have been thinking about this a lot lately when people talk about the Mercedes Benz thing or having more sponsored shows. How quickly everyone forgot, which is humorous because everyone was SO mad at the time!

July 24, 2012, 9:10am  

“It would be reasonable to hope that such a catyclismic few weeks, effectively a gutting of the heart, soul and brains of an institution, that the remaining MOCA trustees would realize that the last couple years have been a titanic mistake. While none of them is talking about all this with the media — and Deitch’s most recent interview primarily addressed disco — there is no indication that the remaining MOCAns have any regrets. They’re standing by their man, who is stayin’ alive.”

— Tyler Green

July 17, 2012, 11:13am  

“But this is not about a particular cast of characters, about good actors and bad. It’s a reflection of the crisis in cultural funding. It’s about the role of museums in a culture where visual art is marginalized except for the buzz around secondary market sales, it’s about the not so subtle recalibration of the meaning of “philanthropy,” and it’s about the morphing of the so-called “art world” into the only speculative bubble still left floating (for the next 20 minutes). Can important and serious exhibitions receive funding without a donor having a horse in the race? Is attendance a sustaining revenue stream for museums? Has it ever been? These are questions we have been asking.”

— Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie

July 16, 2012, 4:06pm  

“The most revealing phrase in Eli Broad’s L.A. Times op-ed about Paul Schimmel’s dismissal is “$100 a visitor.” Broad is looking at exhibition costs in a way few museum visitors do, by taking a show’s cost and dividing it by the number of people who see it. His point is that some Schimmel-style scholarly shows—on which MOCA’s reputation is, or was, based—are costly in per capita terms because relatively few people see them. For Broad, and for unnamed “new trustees,” $100 per visitor is sticker shock territory. Should we feel the same?”

— William Poundstone

July 07, 2012, 1:24pm  

“No you can’t mark your donation for “Paul Schimmel’s salary” so stop asking.”

— Fake Deitch

July 02, 2012, 11:29am  

“Paul Schimmel happened to be the most respected curator ever to come out of Los Angeles, with the exception of Walter Hopps, and to treat him with that kind of disrespect means they have no respect from me.”

—

Veteran Los Angeles Artist Joe Goode is OUTRAGED

Seriously though, all I can picture in my head is, instead of Ed Ruscha’s LACMA is on Fire, I see it as MOCA Is Sinking.

June 29, 2012, 4:55pm