MOCA board 'paralyzed' amid financial crisis

Ten days have passed since news broke of a financial crisis that threatens the very existence of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the nation's premier institution focused on the art of our time. And a week has passed since philanthropist Eli Broad published an Opinion article in The Times that offered $30 million to begin to help shore up and eventually stabilize MOCA's endowment. His reasonable condition: Some of that challenge must be met by others.

So far, MOCA's board of trustees has remained virtually silent on Broad's bold proposition.

I've had conversations with numerous people close to the situation in recent days. Two things are apparent about where MOCA's board stands right now:

First, as a body they are paralyzed...

Read the rest of this commentary at Culture Monster, The Times' arts blog.

-- Christopher Knight

Photo: Gordon Matta-Clark's "Splitting," a 1974 project in which he sawed a house in half, was shown in the artist's retrospective at MOCA in 2007. Credit: Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times