Jerry Saltz writing on the departure of MOCA’s Chief Curator Paul Schimmel: “When I heard the dispiriting news this afternoon that, after 22 years, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art was axing its visionary chief curator Paul Schimmel, I sensed that something inexorably terrible and cravenly well-planned was being carried out. The official announcement never uses the word “fired.” The co-chair of MoCA’s board, David Johnson, issued a mealy-mouthed statement: “Paul Schimmel is stepping down as MoCA’s chief curator. It’s amicable and there will be a release tomorrow.” (Art blogger Mat Gleason is reporting that Schimmel will stay on as a consultant.) The L.A. Times labeled it “a firing made by the museum’s board of trustees … effective immediately.” What it is, by my reading, is another nail in MoCA’s coffin, a sad statement in a sad time when too many museums are driven more by money than art, controlled by bratty billionaires, and overseen by compliant museum directors whose chief goals are packing galleries and placating the board. Schimmel’s good-bye is another sign of an end-game, the culmination of a decade in which a lot of museums broke faith with art.”

SOURCE: Jerry Saltz, “Saltz on the Firing of L.A. MOCA’s Chief Curator, Paul Schimmel,” Vulture.com, June 28, 2012. Continue reading at link below: