Is another one biting the dust!?

The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art is the latest large organization to feel pitch and do a little financial freaking out during this economic downtown (crisis?). But it is not just this current financial market that is causing problems. According to this LA Times article about the museum, it turns out that the museum burned through $20 million in unrestricted funds and borrow $7.5 million more from restricted accounts before the economic climate reached the current low level.

Interestingly enough, the article mentions some ideas that the management has been considering to shore up the finances - seems like none of them involve cutting costs besides the short term closure of one of its three exhibition spaces (which they rent for only $1 a year from the city). However, this does not include cutting any staff members associated with the space. Though it does say that it would shave 10% off operating costs, it doesn't mention moving any of the artwork to other spaces, either, meaning costly climate control for those works would still be maintained.

It seems as though they simply expect the public to pay up without any managerial reformatting or pledge to fix the museum up internally. Donations seem like they would just be thrown at an organization that will continue to tumble without more help that just money. The people at LA MoCA really need to start thinking more creatively than, as the article says, "Put up or shut up, now or never."

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Leslie Fay