LACMA vs. MOCA

Los Angeles museum wars

As museums go, they promise to be state-of-the-art. On November 16, the twenty-one-year-old Los Angeles County Museum of Art inaugurates its $35 million Robert O. Anderson building for twentieth-century art, a neo-Babylonian edifice designed by the firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer to serve as a commanding new frontispiece to the museum's three existing buildings. Then, only two weeks later, dedication ceremonies take place at the fledgling Museum of Contemporary Art, a $23 million neoEgyptian conceit fashioned by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to be the centerpiece of the city's ongoing downtown redevelopment. The art-cum-social whirl, rising to both occasions, is setting aside two fortnights full of buffets and receptions, ribbon cuttings and cocktail parties, in what amounts to dueling dedications.

Ostensibly, LACMA and MOCA—as they are acronymically known—are the best of friends. But ever since the two museum projects were first announced in the summer of 1979, social lines have been drawn. Traditionally, LACMA has attracted old-money types, the Ahmansons and the Chandlers, and corporate tycoons such as Dr. Armand Hammer, Dr. Franklin Murphy, and Edward W. Carter. MOCA has drawn upon a younger, flashier set, many of them with Hollywood connections. For one benefit art auction, TV producer Douglas Cramer hosted his fellow trustees onboard the Love Boat itself. Although sides have been taken—local collector Frederick Weisman threw his lot in with LACMA, while his exwife, Marcia, went to MOCA—the social distinctions are narrowing. Attorney Daniel N. Belin is president of the LACMA board, but his wife, Daisy, sits across town with the Contemporary crowd. And while MOCA has lured such international collectors as Dominique de Menil and Dr. Giuseppe Panza di Biumo to its roster, LACMA has been busy romancing such showpeople as David Geffen, Steve Martin, and David Wolper, all of whom have joined its board.

lacma—set to unveil such new acquisitions as Georges Braque's Still Life with Violin, in addition to an inaugural exhibition entitled "The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985"—has invited President and Mrs. Reagan. MOCA opens with a yearlong exhibition called "Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945-1986," underwritten by IBM, and is offering up theatrical Wunderkind Peter Sellars and his staging of Zangezi, a 1922 work by Russian poet Velemir Khlebnikov, as its piece de resistance. Ever the diplomat, LACMA'S director, Earl A. Powell III, suggests that "the re-emergence of the County Museum—along with MOCA and the other activity that is going on—will establish Los Angeles as a major art center, something many Easterners have a problem with." As for the local competition, Lenore S. Greenberg, president of the MOCA board, adds, "We're all part of the same art community. When it comes to fund-raising, though, we're not sharing our lists."

Gregg Kilday