Michael Govan came to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art seven years ago with a mission to make it one of the most prestigious institutions in the country, one worth mentioning alongside New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art.
Now he's trying to seize an opportunity to gain ground on them in a single stroke. Govan and LACMA's trustees have proposed a takeover of L.A.'s financially adrift Museum of Contemporary Art and its crown jewels: a 6,000-piece collection that's one of the world's most admired troves of post-World War II art.
But Govan has an imposing rival in billionaire Eli Broad, L.A.'s eminence grise of art philanthropy. And Broad has cards of his own to play.
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Broad is brokering a possible MOCA partnership with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., whose board chairman, John Wilmerding, said this week that the federally funded museum is eager to provide curatorial expertise but not money.
Broad has repeatedly declined comment on the possible LACMA-MOCA combination, and so have MOCA leaders who ultimately will have to decide the question.
But art world experts speculate that Broad could be motivated by rivalry with Govan and a desire to ensure a successful launch of his namesake Broad Collection museum, which is set to open across the street from MOCA's Grand Avenue base next year.
"It strikes me as purely personal," said Bruce Robertson, a former curator of American art at LACMA who teaches art history at UC Santa Barbara. "Eli has worked very hard to have the position as most important philanthropist in town," while "Michael Govan has demonstrated emphatically that he doesn't need Eli Broad to be successful."
But that theory is discounted by Thomas Lawson, dean of the School of Art at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
"That's an easy way of explaining things, to find a slightly dark personal angle," he said.
Lawson believes Broad's resistance to a LACMA takeover could be motivated more by concerns that LACMA control could make operations at MOCA more distant and bureaucratic, less collaborative with the Broad Collection and less likely to generate the diverse and dynamic programming vital for its success.
If MOCA, whose holdings are more extensive, doesn't offer frequently changing exhibitions that can generate repeat visits, the Broad Collection could also stagnate, Lawson said. He thinks Broad may be banking on symbiotic programming between the two museums to generate a vibrant Grand Avenue cultural scene; the concern would be that LACMA control might prevent effective teamwork.
Robertson and Lawson agreed that the best scenario would be for MOCA to remain independent and capable of asserting its own distinctive approach.
"It's not because Michael wouldn't do a great job, but because L.A. as an art capital needs as much diversity as it can get," Robertson said. "MOCA's vision has always been different from LACMA's."
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For his part, Govan said that LACMA has promised to keep the MOCA name and its downtown locations, and would raise $100 million to ensure that it thrives. He envisions strength in unity.
"If you put the two collections together … it's not too shabby," Govan said this week. What's more, he said the combined collection could be a magnet for even more strong art, since collectors who want their holdings to wind up in museums often seek out the most prestigious destinations.
"If you put this whole thing together, it's potentially more attractive to collectors," he said.
When he saw Broad recently at a trustee's party, "I gave him a hug," Govan said. "I said we should work together."
Broad's response? "He smiled," Govan said, "and Edye [Broad's wife] and I talked about something else."
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