Hard Times Round Up

I'm back from vacation, though while the blog was on hold for a week the crisis of everything, everywhere continued. Over the weekend Tim Rutten at the Los Angeles Times and then Roberta Smith at the New York Times offered ideas on what needs to be done to save the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Rutten says that as a first step the board of trustees and MOCA director Jeremy Strick must go. Smith appears more inclined to retain the trustees and also Strick, whose standard operating procedure at MOCA appears to have been to spend stupidly to mount smart shows like "A Minimal Future, Art as Object, 1958-68", the Robert Rauschenberg "Combines" show and "Whack! Art and the Feminist Revolution". But Smith's ideas for what else to do don't amount to much more than suggesting that "everybody" chip in with a donation. Back to Eli Broad.

Meanwhile, two other SoCal institutions, the Pacific Asia Museum and the Bowers Museum, have announced budget cuts, layoffs and a rejiggering of their exhibition plans as a way to hunker down through the downturn.