Debating the value of red carpet events at museums, and Kim Kardashian’s Twitter following

Over the last few years, museums here have literally been rolling out the red carpet for celebrities. Last year, MOCA's big gala drew Brad and Angelina and Gwen and Gavin. Last month, the Resnick gala at LACMA drew the likes of Tom Hanks, Teri Hatcher and Kim Kardashian.

All of the above took the time to pose for the paparazzi in front of museum logos. Kardashian also found a moment to tweet her 5-million-plus followers, "I'm at the most magnificent masquerade ball at the LACMA Museum!"

My sources for a larger story about Hollywood supporting the arts agreed that galas are important fundraising tools, as tickets sell for as much as $10,000 a seat. But opinion is split on the value of the red carpet itself.

Elizabeth Currid, a USC urban planning professor and author of the forthcoming book, "Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity," sees red-carpet events as key branding strategies. "I think this is a really smart move on the part of the museum directors and their boards. They get it: In order to generate buzz around cultural events, you need to bring cultural stars to them. It's a no-brainer.”

She also calls Kardashian's tweet "incredible p.r. for the museum -- if only 0.5% of her followers bother to look up LACMA, that's 2,500 people.”

But not everyone thinks celebrities send the right message. Dean Valentine, an art collector on the board of the Hammer Museum (which, for its part, has gala dinners without red carpets), is skeptical. "A museum's role is cultural and educational in the deepest sense. It's not clear to me that trotting celebrities out and having their mug shots taken has anything to do with promoting those values," he said.

"In the end, there's a real question: Do we care about art? Or do we treat a museum like just another bar or nightclub?"

-- Jori Finkel
twitter.com/jorifinkel

Photo: Kim Kardashian at LACMA's Resnick gala. Credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

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Comments

[Donald Frazell]

What values? Art museums are just part of the industry, the academic/museo/gallery complex, as self serving and insidious as the one Eisenhower warned about so long ago. They serve themselves, creating jobs on the public and their masters/patrons tax exempt dime to become more powerful. And must create a few jobs for the swarms of newly minted MFAs so they can at least appear it is worth something, and fuel the art academy business on their parents wallets.

That said, I hope actors and stars and such do show up, why not? It is as much for them as anyone else, the academics hardly understand, define or create what is truly art, these new Pharisees of the Temple. Everyone should go, and thats the point. If creative art, vs. fine art made to appease the rich, doesnt bind us together, create the highest common denominator of ALL mankind, what good is it? The artworld is not better or worse than any other sector of our human culture. But all have their ups and downs, we happen to be deep in a decadent trough at the moment, will we start climbing up again?

While I dont mind their having parties and fundraisers at all, when mausoleums such as the Broad and MoCA become nothing but havens of fashion and partying to serve these nouveau riche, displaying their siiny new toys to build up their investment porfolios, then they have failed and abused what has come before, relying on the hard work of real artists to appear reputable. No one but legions of deluded students and their masters go, they are irrelevant to the rest of humanity.

Let the stars shine for a moment, stop being so snotty. Like you all have done so much better with your tinkertoy buildings mimmicking Ruscha's Standard Station painting, damn you have no imaginations or creativity. Or relevancy.

art collegia delenda est
Save the Watts Towers(Nuestro Pueblo),tear down the rotten Ivories.

[THE ART OF PTAH]

WELL,WELL ,,WELL, I WAS IN THE NEWS PAPER @ AGE OF SIX CREATING ART 1976. I NOW KNOW THAT ALL IS ART AND ALL ARE ARTIST.AS EYE SEE IT RIGHT NOW WHERE ARE THOSE WHO CARE ,REALLY JUST THOSE WHO REALLY CARE ABOUT ART ,ART IS LIFE AND BEYOND IT.
LOVE AND LIGHT
PTAH
P.S. WHAT DO THE PEOPLE REALLY CARE ABOUT ? LOL AND THEN SMILE,
AND DON'T FORGET TO VOTE.