Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010 Page: 74

                                
L. Chris Burden, The Big Wheel, 1979; iron, cast, two motorcycles, wood, steel;
112 x 175 x 143 inches; collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles, gift of Lannan Foundation
R. Hiroshi Sugimoto, Studio Drive-In, Culver City, 1993; black-and-white
photograph; 20 x 24 inches; collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art,
Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by Mandy and Cliff Einstein,
Linda and Bob Gersh, Linda and Jerry anger, Marc Selwyn, Marjorie and
Leonard Vernon and the Curators Council

LOS ANGELES
Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Collection: MOCA's First Thirty Years is an overwhelming and astonishing
exhibition arranged according to a loose chronology; the show contains
a treasure trove of more than 500 works by over 200 artists dating from
1939 to the present. It is a challenge just trying to see every artwork in
the museum's two cavernous Geffen and Grand Avenue buildings, but
the remarkable amount of art guarantees something for everyone. It's
an amazing and commendable show. That said, this is not an exhibition
without problems.
Aside from the inevitable questions of who gets included, whose
work shares a gallery and which collectors see their donations exhumed
from storage, MOCA's curators, led by Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, had
to discern which work best exemplifies the institution. This last and most
problematic question lingers heavily in the air, coloring how one sees each
work as a representation of MOCA's past, present and future.
The last year and a half for MOCA was a perilous and controversial
time, to say the least. In November 2008, the Los Angeles Times revealed
that the museum was running on fumes, its operating costs far outweigh-
ing its dwindling endowment. In response, Jeremy Strick, the museum's
then director, floated the idea of dissolving the museum and merging its
collection with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) just down
the road. Then all hell broke loose.
Letters were written to newspaper editors and angry crowds demanded
answers. LA wouldn't stand the idea of losing MOCA. Strick resigned, and
Eli Broad, the city's resident Medici, swooped in with $30 million to save
the museum. Nearly a year later, the board announced that the art dealer/

gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch (a Broad chum) would become the museum's
next director. The decision was met with restrained praise from the art
world, though a palpable undercurrent of concern still lingers; many see
the Deitch appointment as a harbinger of conflicts of interest to come.
In between Broad's cash injection and Deitch's appointment, Thirty Years
opened to the public.
Pop Art asserts itself in the Grand Avenue building. Foremost is a pow-
erful installation of Claes Oldenburg's drippy plaster commodities from his
groundbreaking 1961 installation The Store, which echoes the museum's
very recent tumultuous near-death experience. Try taking a picture of it or
Andy Warhol's nearby 1962 Campbell's Soup Can (Clam Chowder-Manhattan
Style) and a museum guard will politely ask you not to photograph the
work. Why? Just look at the wall labels, which read: "The Edythe and Eli
Broad Collection, Los Angeles" next to a crossed-out camera ideogram.
Both works-and at least three more-belong to the Broads and are not
even promised gifts to MOCA.
While the Broad pieces fill a gaping hole in MOCA's collection, which
houses only one pivotal Warhol, Telephone, a hand-painted work from
1961, their presence as privately owned works on loan from the museum's
major creditor is even more conspicuous and compromises the exhibi-
tion's stated goal: to show work the museum owns. If the Broad pieces
are allowed into play, why not borrow more work from other collectors to
mend another problem: the dearth of women artists, who make up only
about one-fourth of the total artists represented?
The exhibition highlights afew of MOCA's own undeniable touchstones.

74 ART LIES NO. 66