LOS ANGELES’ CURATOR OF NEW ART

After five months in Los Angeles, Howard N. Fox, the County Museum of Art’s recently appointed curator of contemporary art, seems at home in his new job.

“The creative spirit in the city seems to be as much in the air as the smog,” Fox said as he strolled past the installations in “Setting the Stage,” the exhibit that marks his local curatorial debut. The display, which runs through Feb. 16, presents the work of contemporary artists Randy Hayes, Tom Leeson, Edward Knippers and Patricia Patterson.

Fox was associate curator of exhibitions at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden before a phone call from Rusty Powell brought him West. His position was created as part of a curatorial staff expansion before the opening of the museum’s Robert O. Anderson Gallery, slated for next November.

Fox, 39, said contemporary art has been a “constant allure.”

“I have no formal background in art history or studio art, but like everyone in the field of contemporary art, I’m self-taught, and I find it an endlessly mystifying and stimulating challenge to remain informed and up-to-date.

“I would like to see the museum undertake a major initiative in the collection and presentation of contemporary art,” which he defines as “all art from this moment hence. . . . My specialization is art of the last five to six years. It is, after all, the area most alive to us.”

Although the museum has a fine collection of 20th-Century art, he continued, there are only “about 12 pieces of contemporary art from 1980 on, which doesn’t represent the critical issues or stylistic developments of very recent art. My responsibility will be to establish this kind of collection in the most thought-provoking and persuasive way possible.”

Fox’s strategy for this is a two-tiered acquisition plan. “First, I would flesh out the works we have from the 1980s with pieces by about 20 to 25 established artists, such as Jonathan Borofsky, Anselm Kiefer, Robert Longo and Susan Rothenberg.

“Secondly, I’d like to see the museum establish a mechanism for acquiring works by emerging artists, works that could be no more than five years old at any one moment in time and those that would cost no more than $10,000 each.”

After “Setting the Stage,” Fox said, his next exhibition will explore the “changing concept of the avant-garde.” “A lot of critics in recent years have been quick to cheer the death of the avant-garde, yet, clearly, the movement isn’t dead. Art has continued to change, and I think we’re in one of the most richly creative periods of the 20th Century.”

Fox received his master’s degree in literature from the University of Wisconsin. At the Hirshhorn he organized such shows as an exhibition of contemporary Italian spiritual painting, a 10-year survey of international contemporary art and an exhibit of recent works by contemporary sculptors.