UPDATE: You can hear us now:
A little too quickly for me to give you a proper heads-up (although I did announce it on my @CultureGrrl Twitter feed, in the righthand column of the blog), I contributed commentary this afternoon on Southern California’s public radio station, KCRW, regarding an unconfirmed artworld development that’s been touched upon during the last few days in various news accounts (here, here, here and here)—the possible imminent departure of Jeffrey Deitch from the directorship of LA MOCA.
I was joined on air by LA art critic Hunter Drohojowska-Philp. We were interviewed by KCRW’s local anchor for “All Things Considered,”Steve Chiotakis.
Art journalists and tweeters have been atwitter with news that an announcement about Deitch’s departure might be made as soon as tomorrow, after the museum’s board meeting, and that former dealer Deitch may be seeking gallery space in New York (as Hunter mentioned during our conversation).
As CultureGrrl readers already know, my only surprise about this development is that it took so long (more than three years) to happen. As a museum director, Deitch was a great dealer: He never sufficiently moved on from the commercial gallerist mentality to focus on the mundane tasks of administration and fundraising, while letting curators be the curators.
My attempts to get direct confirmation of Deitch’s and MOCA’s next chapter yielded this reply from a MOCA spokesperson:
If and when there is news to confirm, will advise.
The NY Times got closest to naming a reliable source, reporting (in the last of the news stories linked above) that a MOCA trustee “who spoke on condition of anonymity” confirmed that “Deitch has told trustees that he intends to leave, and the museum’s board, which will meet on Wednesday [tomorrow], is expected to form a search committee.”
I should be able to link to Hunter’s and my KCRW segment, possibly embedding the podcast on CultureGrrl, in a future post, hopefully before our comments get overtaken by events!