Big time NYC art dealer Jeffrey Deitch has been appointed director of LAMoCA. Is this a good or bad thing? Should art dealers be Museum Directors? People point to his “good taste”. He’s a nice guy, I’ve always gotten along with him, and he owns an early piece of mine. But this is a lazy hire: his “taste” is irrelevant, since Directors don’t directly decide what hangs in Museums, curators and accessions committees do. Directors basically manage the Board of Trustees and beg other rich folks for money. Not so very different from what art dealers do. So it’s not such a big stretch, but I call it lazy because it’s one more surrender of cultural life and infrastructure to market success. It’s like electing Bloomberg mayor. It reinforcement of the idea that museums should be trophy halls for big game collectors. Sure they can be that, but why not try to think of them as something else? People worry about his conflict of interest issues, which is laughable in the context of overwhelming market reverence through out most of the museum world. Here’s one of MoCA’s biggest problems: they can’t figure out why any one should go there. And Deitch won’t be able to fix that with business savvy. It’s a class issue.
Via: Nayland Blake