Saturday, February 13, 2010

Hitler takes on Jeffrey Deitch

As anyone following the news of the artworld might have heard, Jeffrey Deitch, the A-list art dealer who owns a gallery that bears his name in Chelsea (NY), has just been appointed Director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art famed for its collection of post-WWII art. Only few (please count me out!) can remember the last time an art dealer (whose business runs on the oil of high octane profitability of works of art), was asked to run an art museum, a quintessential non-profit institution. And as you can guess, not a few people in the art world, especially art museum curators are sulking, bitching about the new development, as if Mr. Deitch is sure to bring some kind of pestilence into the clean, proper, innocent, humane world they inhabit.

But if you ask me, I would say, bravo to LA MoCA and thumbs up Mr. Deitch, because it seems to me that Museums should just stop this pretense and acknowledge the nature of the world they inhabit. That they, OK sometimes, need a new set of ideas on how to survive in the very world that guarantees their existence: the world of high, stinking fat, money. Especially given that LA MoCA, almost went belly up a couple of years ago. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Deitch is the knight with the...

In any case, he must watch his back, because museum curators are not the only ones miffed by his appointment. Incredibly, Adolf Hitler (whoever said he was dead?) is also running high temperature because of Deitch and LA MoCA (next thing, Osama will appear even more sallow with his AK-47 threatening the civilized world for allowing Mr. Deitch step into the LA Museum.

To see for yourself how badly Hitler feels about the news from Los Angeles click here:

No comments: