A couple of weeks ago I was in Los Angeles, and dropped in on MoCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a Saturday, and there was a free entry promotion, so I figured the place would be packed — on a pretty weekend afternoon in New York, MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney all have lines out the door — but it felt like I was the only one around. "Nobody goes downtown on the weekends here," a friend told me the next day.
I should have been happy, because what's better than an empty museum that you have to yourself? Arata Isozaki's MoCA art cave, however, didn't strike me as a particularly amenable place to look at painting. The lighting is dim (in sunny L.A., of all places) and the cramped gallery layout doesn't leave room enough for the collection to breathe. The Rothko room is a big disappointment: sticking an oversize Charles Ray sculpture in there seems like a juvenile sight gag.
I don't keep close tabs on the art world michegas of Los Angeles, but I did notice the prominent donor's panel in front of the museum's entry. Eli Broad sits at the top with a gift in excess of $30 million. There's an anonymous benefactor at $5 million, a few smaller donors, and then about a hundred donors who've given $1,500. That kind of shocked me: that you could get your name placed so prominently on the donor wall for a measly fifteen hundred bucks, and then that the museum could get so few to actually fork over such a minimal gift. I suppose if someone else gives $30 million, you figure it's his toy and why bother?
MoCA's Geffen Contemporary outpost is a lot more successful, architecturally and curatorially. The trippy
Suprasensorial exhibition of contemporary op art now on view is definitely worth a visit.
The next day, I hit the Grove, an outdoor mall dressed up like the commercial center of a European city. It was, in marked contrast to downtown, packed. Angelenos seem to want the kind of pedestrian-friendly urbanism, with diverse retail and entertainment options, they can't find in the arts district around MoCA. As that area is developed (with a new Broad museum by DS+R, a massive new development by Frank Gehry across from his spectacular LA Philharmonic), it would be good to learn a little something from the Vegas-y mall across town.
Comments [15]
02.15.11
12:30
the suggestion was not that angelenos prefer shopping to museum-going, but that they prefer a multi-varied street life to one that is not. the extent to which ny museums and neighborhoods are over-commercialized is not relevant.
as for the popularity of culver, i don't really need to explain it anymore than i need to explain the popularity of chelsea.
02.15.11
01:45
02.15.11
03:17
but i think your logic is flawed. just because there are popular destinations that don't have "traditional street life", doesn't mean, ipso facto, that any place can be successful under those conditions, or that those conditions are optimal, or that other places should not develop some other kind of urban structure.
for the record, it was a native angeleno who told me "nobody goes downtown on the weekends here."
02.15.11
04:53
02.15.11
05:22
but i wouldn't wish vegas (and i've already gotten into trouble with las vegans on this site) on your downtown, just in my (i guess trite) way was suggesting that it might be nice to have some street life spring up along the walk between the two mocas, as that space is developed and revitalized. actually, you kind of have it there on the blocks by little tokyo, which had some life to them, without a bunch of crate and barrell and anthropologies etc.
in any event, i hope my getty comments will not be so controversial.
02.15.11
05:42
Angelinos know well the type of arguments that Mark is making and some try to implement these ideas even as others roundly reject them. Los Angeles urbanism is thankfully a work in progress, it's outcome in flux. Hopefully we will not learn in Downtown from the Grove, Las Vegas, or even New York.
I kind of like the quiet of Grand Avenue, don't miss the crowds on top of that one hill on a Saturday or Sunday (quite different from a Monday through Friday), and long for the day to come again when what drives the audience numbers at MOCA Grand Avenue is again the acuteness of the exhibits, not a simulacrum of urbanism thought up by a smart designer or developer living 2000 miles to the east (north, south, or west).
There is plenty of real urbanism in Downtown Los Angeles, the type that New Yorkers familiar with their own 70's, which were pretty quiet in places, are now quite nostalgic for. Perhaps we will keep it this way on Bunker Hill so that tourists like Mark keep coming to enjoy solitude and maybe even the art. We still have that choice.
02.16.11
02:07
most cities are "works in progress," so what? we're hardly perfect here in ny.
i was being rather flip in my comparison of downtown with the grove. i'm aware of gehry's history; but the success or failure of his development is maybe not so automatic as you suggest. (certainly, his plans for atlantic yards has been controversial.) i was not suggesting a mall-ification of downtown.
i'm done commenting on this further here. the facts of my observation remain; i saw what i saw.
02.16.11
09:53
It would be a safe guess that your native friend has avoided downtown and relies on its old (and earned) reputation. That is easily confirmed when someone goes to a car-friendly parking hostile Grand Ave.
And as your observation that Angelenos want to walk is true, as it is with most people. That can be seen daily (and on weekends) in the Historic Core, 7th near Grand, Little Tokyo, and L.A. Live.
I can picture the Geffen quiet on a weekend, compared to cities that don't have nice days in winter. But I cannot picture the surrounding area, Little Tokyo, stripped of people.
You may have seen what you saw in Downtown, but you didn't not see it all.
And don't be so defensive about people defending L.A. It's a trait I have seen from those people who like living in SF, NY, Boston, and Chicago.
02.20.11
03:53
demands a longer closer look at it's many enclaves, not a single paragraph summation of long tired stereotypes of lack of culture and past shallow reputation, some of which does still exist outside of downtown.
02.20.11
04:16
02.20.11
05:27
"it would be good to learn a little something from the Vegas-y mall across town. "
Seriously? They did, and it's called L.A. Live and it SUCKS.
That you would prefer a tired Wolfgang Puck restaurant or a California Pizza Kitchen over a Ludobites experience or Joseph Centeno's Lazy Ox Canteen or any other of some of L.A.'s best new Restaurant's and bars/gastropubs that inhabit the art's district says a lot.
02.20.11
05:52
02.20.11
07:00
By the way, that "new development by Frank Gehry across from his spectacular LA Philharmonic" is not LA Philharmonic. It is Walt Disney Concert Hall, completed 2003, that is the home of L.A. Phil. (Gehry designed the hall, not the philharmonic).
02.20.11
10:12
02.21.11
01:13