The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has had to deal with a variety of challenges, including financial ones.
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: July 25, 2013
When Jeffrey Deitch was named in 2010 to lead the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, many in the city’s art world expressed guarded optimism that he could turn around a museum that had come close to foundering only two years earlier.
But others urged Mr. Deitch, a veteran New York art dealer, to run from the job, which they saw as next to impossible, a tangle of long-festering internal problems compounded by the museum’s unenviable basics: two locations blocks apart, one of them with no onsite parking in a downtown neighborhood that remains a tough sell for tourists and residents alike.
In retrospect, Mr. Deitch may wish he had listened to the second group. On Wednesday, the museum announced his resignation three years into a five-year contract, after a tenure that included a few well-attended, critically praised exhibitions but that was marked by staff defections, budget problems and accusations that Mr. Deitch had neither the ability nor the desire to run a large public institution.
Mr. Deitch has not publicly spoken about stepping down and declined to comment when reached by phone Thursday.
Since the decision, few people have been willing to speak on the record about what happened at the museum, which has one of the finest collections of postwar art in the country. Privately, his supporters say that he took the job with several disadvantages, among them the inability — partly because of the museum’s financial situation — to bring in people he knew to help him. And relations between Mr. Deitch and Paul Schimmel, the museum’s chief curator, were tense from the beginning. (Mr. Schimmel left under pressure last year.)
In 2008, the museum was saved from going under or merging with another institution by the billionaire collector Eli Broad, who is building a museum to house his own collection opposite the Museum of Contemporary Art’s location on Grand Street. Charles Young, the chancellor emeritus of the University of California, Los Angeles, was brought in by Mr. Broad as chief executive of the contemporary museum and quickly stabilized it.
But Mr. Broad also engineered the selection of Mr. Deitch, and some trustees and financial supporters of the museum felt that the choice had been forced on them, leading to a downturn in giving, according to a former museum official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues involved.
The former official added, however, that Mr. Deitch bore much of the responsibility for financial problems — and for staff problems — that worsened under his leadership.
“He was going to do whatever he wanted,” the former official said. “He would add things, cancel things, change exhibition schedules, would hold parties that would end up being only break-even. He had no concept or need for those kind of events to help the museum financially.”
Of a large public institution in which consensus and communication are important, the former official added: “He had no ability or interest in functioning in that kind of environment. At the end of the day, I think Jeffrey was incredibly unhappy at MOCA.”
Mr. Deitch’s supporters counter that he recruited several wealthy new members to the board, including Ari Emanuel, the high-powered talent agent; Maurice Marciano, a founder of the Guess clothing company; and Laurence Graff, a London-born billionaire and diamond merchant. In all, 16 new trustees joined during Mr. Deitch’s years.
“I found him to be an inspiring person to work with,” said Rebecca Bronfein Raphael, an associate director of development at the museum in 2010 and 2011 who had previously worked for Mr. Deitch at his New York gallery. “He instills a lot of trust and confidence in the people that he works with.”
Ms. Raphael, who now works for the online art site Artsy, added, “Artists are his No. 1 passion.” In the realm of fund-raising, she said, “I think it took some time to find a groove, but I think that was just a general symptom of being a new person, working in a new city.”
Mr. Deitch’s curatorial staff is now reduced to two full-time members, and there is great uncertainty about the exhibition schedule over the next year. “He has absolutely no interest in any other exhibitions” than those he originated or organized himself, said one current museum staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The staff is completely in the dark and has been since Jeffrey arrived.”
The Los Angeles artist John Baldessari, who resigned from the board last year and criticized Mr. Deitch as trying to move the museum too much in a pop culture direction, said: “Jeffrey wasn’t disingenuous. He did what he does, and that’s what the museum wanted.”
“But I think the real problem is the museum board,” Mr. Baldessari added. “It’s a really nonfunctional board. They need to have a clear vision for this museum as an important place and a place where people feel the need to go, and I think right now it’s a troubled and a flawed vision.”