Prior to a meeting of MOCA’s Board of Trustees, the LA Times spoke with six trustees “about museum decision-making and the way ahead.”

“For this story, The Times approached all 39 MOCA trustees by email or phone. Only six agreed to be interviewed: Gersh, former Hard Rock Cafe operator Peter Morton and the four life trustees [Lenore Greenberg, Frederick Nicholas, Betye Burton, and Audrey Irmas] whose letter to The Times disputed an opinion piece by Broad that said MOCA was on the right course.

The article goes on to note, “Some say that Broad has too much influence after his $30-million rescue of the museum in December 2008, when years of overspending and fundraising shortfalls had left it financially depleted. There’s also a perception that the 10 or so trustees who make up the MOCA board’s executive committee have too much power and share too little information. […]

Lenore Greenberg, a life trustee and former board president with more than 30 years’ service to MOCA, said board members were improperly cut out of the decision-making process while the museum contracted with Google to create a new YouTube channel called MOCA TV.

The deal was announced at the trustees’ January meeting, Greenberg said, having already been decided by the board’s executive committee, without a vote by the full membership. Greenberg says the board’s rules give the executive committee authority to act on its own only to accept artworks offered as gifts at year’s end, when it would be hard to get a quorum, and the donors are rushing to qualify for tax deductions.

‘It’s very discouraging,’ she said. ‘The way board meetings have been run has not been one in which open discussion is encouraged.'”

SOURCE: MIke Boehm, “MOCA Meeting Aims to Generate Unity Among Trustees,” Los Angeles Times (September 3). Continue reading at link below: