George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann - "Let Curators Be Curators, MOCA’s New Chief Says" @nytimes by By RANDY KENNEDY and JORI FINKELJAN
The New York office of Philippe Vergne, the Dia Art Foundation director, who was named on Wednesday to lead the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, looks out onto a brick vista of Chelsea art galleries. But hanging on the wall next to the windows is a photograph of Walter De Maria’s New Mexico land-art work “The Lightning Field,” showing a vast sweep of Western plateau.
As Mr. Vergne heads to California — the second New York-based director in a row chosen by the Los Angeles museum — he will in one sense be taking over an institution whose possibilities are just as wide-open. Barely more than 30 years old, beloved and fiercely defended by local artists and in possession of one of the best collections of postwar art in the country, the museum is still in the early stages of defining itself in a rapidly growing international art world. And its board, after years of failing to give the museum enough money to meet its ambitions, recently announced that it had raised $100 million toward an endowment that it hoped to increase to $150 million.
But Mr. Vergne will also take over an institution that, by the standards of most large-city museums, is now little more than a shell. It employs only two full-time curators, after several departures in recent years, most during the tumultuous tenure of the previous director, Jeffrey Deitch, who himself left in 2013, with two years left on a five-year contract. After years of cost-cutting and layoffs, the museum has 42 full-time employees. By contrast the Hammer Museum, across town, has 93 full-time employees, including six curators, even though its collection and exhibition space is much smaller than the Museum of Contemporary Art’s.
In a wide-ranging interview Friday morning, Mr. Vergne said that, unlike Mr. Deitch — who was criticized for running the museum as de facto chief curator, leading to the acrimonious departure of the longtime head of the curatorial staff, Paul Schimmel — he believed in the importance of a chief curator. He said he would make his first priority finding one and recruiting a staff, and then would mostly stand back and help them work.
Mr. Vergne, 47, who was born and educated in France but who has worked for many years in the United States, said that he understood how much work would have to be done to rebuild the museum. And while he is highly respected as a curator, he said, “I don’t think I will curate.”
“The role of the director is to support the curators and let the curators be curators,” said Mr. Vergne, an animated man known for dry wit and a persistently thick Gallic accent.
He added that even with the recent growth of the endowment, he expects much of his job to watch the bottom line and to woo donors. “I know that to do that,” he said, “my time will be consumed with making sure the institution is financially secure.”
His goal, he said, is to have the resources to be able to use the collection as a launching pad to make the museum “the most experimental institution in this country.”
Mr. Vergne’s record as a fund-raiser for Dia is not clear. In 2009 the foundation announced plans to build a new space on West 22nd Street. But construction has not begun and Dia has not commented on the state of its capital campaign. In the interview, Mr. Vergne insisted that progress would be announced soon and that the “proof will be in the pudding.”
“I feel very strong about where Dia is compared to where Dia was when I found it,” he said.
Fred Sands, the new president of the museum’s board, said it chose Mr. Vergne in part because he had solid administrative talents as well as the respect of artists and a deep understanding of the contemporary-art terrain.
“He knows how to run a business,” he said. “A museum is a not-for-profit business, but it is a businesAs for Mr. Deitch, a veteran New York gallery owner whom he described as “sort of a loner,” Mr. Sands said: “He was not focused on running the museum. I love the guy, but that’s not what he was interested in.”
He added: “I think the artists and curators are looking for a good dad and Philippe is that. People have been saying to me, ‘Well, you finally did it.’ ”
A question that has hovered over the appointment is the role of Eli Broad, the billionaire collector who was deeply involved in recruiting Mr. Deitch and who later this year will open a museum featuring his own vast contemporary collection across the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art’s downtown site. Mr. Broad, the museum’s founding chairman, bailed it out in 2008 when it almost went under, but he has also been criticized as a kind of puppet master.
While Mr. Vergne said he met Mr. Broad as “part of one conversation” during his visits, search committee leaders said Mr. Broad was not involved in making the selection.
But Mr. Vergne emphasized that he was open to the idea, when appropriate, of sharing pieces from the museum’s collection with Mr. Broad’s museum. “What makes a collection alive is for a collection to be seen, so I think it would be great if there is a relationship between the two institutions,” he said. “For me it’s almost a no-brainer.”
“I like Modernism,” he added, “but more is more.”
Randy Kennedy reported from New York and Jori Finkel from Los Angeles.
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