Nor should it be forgotten either that, at first, MOCA was in great part a creation of the Pasadena contemporary art scene that had a sudden void when the Pasadena Art Museum went disastrously and suddenly under in 1974 and Norton Simon took over – sending all of the museum’s contemporary art into the basement in favor of his Old Masters. Getting to one of the two MOCA sites? Much more doable. The idea of getting to a weeknight opening at LACMA for anyone from Downtown L.A., the San Gabriel Valley, or points east – forget about it. MOCA had fun opening parties with KCRW DJs, not LACMA.Īnd it should not be forgotten that, in a megalopolis increasingly hard to get across, MOCA is a saving artistic grace for the entire eastside of the county. ![]() master Ed Ruscha’s deadpan “Los Angeles County Art Museum on Fire” was such a popular painting. LACMA was the dowdy and hopelessly unhip Wilshire Boulevard institution mired in its tar pits of indecision, an indifferent permanent collection and a campus so ugly that it’s no wonder L.A. ![]() When MOCA opened – first at the Temporary Contemporary (now Geffen) in Little Tokyo, then at the red-rock world HQ on Grand Avenue – it was MOCA that was cool and successful. No matter how lousy some of the recent decisions made by MOCA leadership have been, it should not be forgotten how important the museum has been to the cultural life of the Southland over the last 30 years. MOCA under another museum’s wing is better than no MOCA at all. Most importantly, certainly, the average museum-goer.įor the latter group, which is the great bulk of us, the best thing about the well-run, balanced-books Los Angeles County Museum of Art taking over the poorly run, deep-in-the-red Museum of Contemporary Art would be the latter not shutting down. ![]() That’s a mouthful of art-museum alphabet soup, and the answer isn’t simple from any of myriad perspectives: The international art world, which means artists and collectors from all over who view Los Angeles as at least a somewhat-major player the taxpayers of Los Angeles County City Hall politicos the cultural powers that be in Southern California developers who like attractions in the new downtown.
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