knight on deitch
The LA Times’ Christopher Knight on the difference between the art market and museums…
The problem is that the market represents a very narrow slice of a vast art-pie. Art commerce gets out-sized press because the public, although generally unfamiliar with and incurious about art, is familiar with and curious about money. In modern capitalism, art and popular culture intersect in the market.
Museums, on the other hand, are places where popular appeal should be irrelevant. Unpopular but potentially revolutionary art ideas need places to be seen, heard and debated. Depth, not breadth, is what matters. That’s what makes the American system of art museums conceptually unique, even if it doesn’t always work out that way in practice.
The appointment of Deitch is like a piece of art in and of itself; the MOCA board of trustees couldn’t have picked a more interesting lightning rod.