EX-ARCO CHIEF ENGINEERS MUSEUM’S PROGRESS

William F. Kieschnick was on the phone in his 49th-floor office when he smelled smoke. Embroiled in an intense business transaction that he feared might fall apart if he so much as whispered, “Excuse me, but my building may be on fire,” the former chief of Atlantic Richfield Co. ignored the odor and concentrated on the conversation. Finally signing off, he walked over to his window in the Arco tower and saw--with a mixture of relief and dismay--that the Los Angeles Central Library was burning.

The youthful-looking, 63-year-old executive tells the story as a casual aside to a visitor’s comments about his lofty view of downtown Los Angeles. But at the same time he reveals himself as a man who would rather risk incineration than “drop the ball.”

The 1947 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rice University spent his entire career at Arco, moving through the ranks to the pinnacle of power. Elected company president in 1981 and chief executive officer the following year, he took charge of a petroleum empire that had become a major visual arts supporter.

Under the guidance of Chairman Robert O. Anderson, Arco had acquired a large and distinguished art collection and in 1976 founded the Arco Center for Visual Art, a lively showcase for contemporary art in the subterranean shopping center beneath the company’s 52-story office tower. In 1980 Arco also bestowed a $3.5-million matching grant on the County Museum of Art for a new wing for modern and contemporary art and donated $1 million to help launch the Museum of Contemporary Art (both scheduled to open late this fall).

As chief of Arco, Kieschnick (pronounced Quiche-nick ) suddenly acquired a prominent place in Los Angeles’ art community along with enormous corporate responsibilities, but few art watchers expected him to be more than a figurehead. He was a high-powered chemical engineer with no known interest in art, carrying out his civic duty.

His reign at Arco soon became controversial as he put the overextended company on a strict diet. With Kieschnick overseeing a massive restructuring plan, the company reversed its tendency to diversify, sold its troubled non-oil operations, repurchased about 10%of its stock and reduced its work force.

Those moves made waves in the business community--and ripples in the arts. One of the casualties was Arco’s popular gallery, which had become an important fixture of the downtown art scene. With the 1984 closing of the Arco Center for Visual Art, Kieschnick’s art-sphere image changed from benign figurehead to villain. “He doesn’t care;he’s an engineer,” was the refrain that echoed through the community. Critics charged that the gallery’s annual budget of about $500,000 was insignificant to Arco’s $30-million foundation, which supports higher education, the arts and environmental projects.

But as Arco’s profile was sinking on the art world’s horizon, Kieschnick’s was quietly rising at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Elected to the museum’s board of trustees in 1981, he became president in 1982 and succeeded Eli Broad as chairman in 1984--all, it seemed, in the course of corporate stewardship.

When Kieschnick announced his October, 1985, departure from Arco (taking advantage of a nearly $500,000 early retirement golden parachute), many thought he would also flee the museum. They were wrong.

A year later, Kieschnick is still chairman of the board at MOCA. He estimates that he spends 60%of his time on the museum and another 20% with other public commitments, including serving as chairman of the beleaguered United Way.

The suggestion that he might have decided to relax more seems to surprise him. “I didn’t retire;I just retired from Arco,” he says, in the office the company has given him to carry out his public functions.

“When a person has chosen to work with an organization in an important phase of its life, it’s usually disruptive to leave on his own rhythm. You have to go along with the rhythm of the institution. “MOCA is a precocious adolescent. It has a lot of growing pains and a lot of promise. It’s important to maintain it and to accelerate the momentum. This is the year to work harder.”

MOCA’s promise could make L.A. the home of the largest international palace for contemporary art in the world. Its growing pains have included everything from the early defection of its original director, Pontus Hulten, to public wrangles with its architect, Arata Isozaki.

Max Palevsky, a former trustee, got into a brouhaha with the board over architectural control of the museum’s design, which resulted in his resignation and a lawsuit.

Such early traumas put the realization of the museum in doubt. Since, however, things have calmed down and looked up with the acquisition of a core collection and virtual completion of the building. Problems are a trifle more normal--the inevitable need to raise ever more money, fleshing out the collection.

MOCA’s tiny staff of 35 (compared to 600 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art)is spread thin trying to run an impressive schedule of exhibitions at the Temporary Contemporary. Shows open barely on time and the museum is accused of favoring crowd-pleasing and self-serving extravaganzas instead of aesthetically tough curatorial vision.

Kieschnick has the complex project by the tail. But he insists that the job was not forced upon him and that the territory is not alien. According to his account, it’s not the least bit strange for a chemical engineer to be mixed up with an art museum.

Explaining that executives in high places are obligated to do volunteer work, he says, “I had plenty of opportunities to fulfill Arco’s share of volunteer roles. Those of us who believe in stewardship pick things we will enjoy.”

He traces his affinity to contemporary art back to June, 1947, when he went to work for Atlantic Richfield in research and development.

“In research and development, my job was to innovate. The purpose was to improve technology and develop new products, but I began my professional life concerned with how you innovate.

“Over the years, I have become increasingly convinced that innovation drives the better part of our society. That strong passion made me open to the discovery that contemporary art is a very important symbolic expression around us which celebrates innovation, because that’s what it is.”

Working for a company that fills its corporate offices and reception areas with art, he began to believe that “the ambiguity of art” was good for technicians and scientists. “Having to face ambiguity opens us up to the intuitive aspects of experience,” he notes, adding that “Contemporary art is good for the social setting. It adds zest and ripple to the sea.”

Kieschnick offers that rather surprising testimonial while admitting that the museum didn’t solicit his skills as a missionary but as a highly accomplished administrator.

He was enlisted to help MOCA with “something called governance--deciding who makes decisions, how you run the place.” The museum is “a public trust” and trustees are “expected to invest the endowment wisely,” he says. They also must nominate people to the board “by due process, not cronyism,” design personnel policies, oversee acquisitions and consider ways to serve “MOCA’s many publics.” “Trustees are just as concerned with the quality of mix of exhibitions as with financial viability,” he says.

Kieschnick boils down his labors at MOCA to “three big adventures.” First is the “slow, steady job of building governance,” a relatively predictable process to an experienced administrator. The other two undertakings--establishing the Temporary Contemporary facility and buying part of Giuseppe Panza di Biuomo’s collection--were unexpected.

“The Temporary Contemporary illustrates the fluctuations of a new institution. The high cost of money initially put things on hold. For a while we didn’t even know if we would get a building. The Temporary Contemporary was an interim programming venture to serve constituents and build experience,” he says.

“Not being very skilled in turning a warehouse into an art museum, we were delighted and surprised at how well it was received by the public and art professionals. The good news is that we get to keep it (on a 50-year lease from the city); the challenging news is that we must garner support to maintain it for the long run.

“We didn’t set out to buy the Panza collection either,” he continues, “but an opportunity came along to acquire a core collection (of 80 Abstract Expressionist and early Pop works). We had to figure out how to deal with it, setting up installment payments (that spread the $11-million cost over six years)so that it wouldn’t be an albatross.”

Underlying all those “adventures” is the museum’s ongoing need for money and trustees’ obligation to raise it. This year the total cost of programs and operations at Temporary Contemporary was $6 million. “People look at the physical reality of the TC and now MOCA. They hear that we had a successful gala in May and think that this is a fat cat,” he says. “In fact, it’s a very lean cat, very unfinished in its funding.

“Two years ago we said we needed an additional $35 million above the qualifying endowment (of $13 million). We’ve raised $14 million of that $35 million, so we have about $20 million to go. We’d like to get most of it this year, the rest next year.”

How do you do that? Kieschnick has ready answers for those who ask why they should contribute:Contemporary art symbolizes the importance of innovation to our society; MOCA has the potential of being a world-class contemporary art museum, and the museum is a civic asset.

“People in business who don’t have a particular interest in contemporary art should be glad the museum is here,” he argues. “It brings attention to the city and contributes to its viability. We should enlarge support from the business community simply because the museum is a civic asset.”

Once the museum is safely launched, Kieschnick will return to private life. He may explore his contacts with venture capital or go into a small business. “There is a lot more to this (museum) than I expected but, as I reflect upon it, not more than was destined,” he muses. “But this is an interlude, not a life style. It’s just an accident of things cresting.”