The news just keeps coming regarding the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)'s current woes.
Its contentious director, Jeffrey Deitch, gave his side of the story to The LA Times yesterday, defending himself against the naysayers of his brand of glitzy curation:
"Your average cultured reader ... thinks that I've destroyed the museum, that I've dismantled all intelligence from the program, that we're doing nothing serious, that we're showing, like, celebrity portraits or something, that nobody on the staff gets along with me," he says. "And that is not what's happening here."
In late June, the venerable curator Paul Schimmel left the museum after 22 years of service. ARTINFO was tipped off that he was fired, but a board member assured HuffPost Arts he resigned. Either way, many people see Deitch as the problem.
Charles Young, MOCA's former chief executive, recently asked trustee Eli Broad to axe Deitch, and all the artists on MOCA's board resigned in protest against Schimmel's departure.
Schimmel, however, has remained mum about his thoughts on the MOCA debacle. When asked by GalleristNY for comment on Deitch's reign and recent artist resignations, he simply said, “I ain’t doin’ it.”
Here's our favorite tweets so far about MOCA's malaise. What do you think, readers? Does Deitch's defense hold up?