Three of four artists on the Museum of Contemporary Art’s board of trustees have now resigned. The dire action is a warning as much as a protest. It shows how trustees critically important to MOCA’s future are being marginalized. In commentary about the museum, a crucial fact of its widely celebrated, sometimes fractious history is often forgotten: MOCA was founded by artists. In 1979, a large and steadily expanding group around acclaimed abstract painter Sam Francis determined that it was long past time for a museum dedicated to the presentation and study of recent art. Soon they drew an influential array of civic leaders into their orbit. Certainly no institution comes into being or grows into an entity of international stature without a host of important contributing parties. But artists reside at the core of MOCA’s being. They’re the soul inside what sometimes seems to be a soulless institutional life.” Source: Christopher Knight, “MOCA’s Loss of Artist-Trustees Strikes at Museum’s Core,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2012. Read in full at link below: