Museum Becomes Advocate for Disney Hall Construction

In an aggressive move to help rescue the financially embattled Disney Concert Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art is putting architect Frank O. Gehry’s models and drawings on display on its plaza, introducing the public to its full artistic range for the first time.

This level of advocacy is unusual for an art museum, but as a champion of the world-renowned architect, the museum is trying to pull the proposed concert hall from its financial mire. The museum’s high-profile exhibition comes at a critical time, as civic leaders, including the mayor, are urgently trying to raise $52.3 million to meet a June 1 deadline.

“There was never any public outreach to explain the project and the only pictures people saw were in the paper,” Gehry said in an interview.

Until now, talk has focused primarily on the struggles of the project, conceived as the new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the latest addition to the downtown Music Center. A $50-million gift from Lillian B. Disney in 1987 set the project in motion, but construction on the hall came to an abrupt halt in 1994 in the face of massive cost overruns attributed both to bad estimates and to the complexity of Gehry’s design.

Mayor Richard Riordan has been working with developer Eli Broad seeking a major patron. “From that lead gift it would be very easy to get the rest of it,” Riordan said recently. “And as we go along my optimism has gone from 33% to 70%.”

But despite the mayor’s sanguine view, fund-raisers will not name any firm donors. Harry Hufford, chief fund-raiser for the Disney Hall committee, says he needs a commitment of between $50 million and $100 million to meet the June deadline set by Los Angeles County, which owns the land as well as the new $110-million parking garage built as the hall’s base. “Many of the contributions [already made] are contingent on reaching the goal,” Hufford said.

Enter MOCA director Richard Koshalek, a longtime Gehry ally, whose museum is just a block away from the hall’s site at the corner of 1st Street and Grand Avenue. With this exhibition, opening Oct. 27, Koshalek is using his museum as a keen advocacy tool.

“This is not just another building in the city of L.A.,” Koshalek said. “We’ll never have a city of any importance unless we emphasize its cultural aspects, and the public should expect us to set a very high standard for the buildings that house these cultural institutions.”

By presenting models and drawings of architect Gehry’s design in two trailers and a third steel structure, the exhibition raises questions about the relation between art and architecture.

Other museums have actively promoted particular architectural movements, most notably the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but few have engaged so directly in such politically charged issues involving architecture’s role in shaping the future of the metropolis. Koshalek’s commitment to this show is unique: He is organizing it himself--his first solo curatorial foray since his arrival here as the museum’s chief curator in 1980.

Koshalek’s ties to architecture run deep. Trained as an architect at the University of Minnesota in the mid-1960s, he later worked closely with Edward Larabee Barnes on the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where he was a curator. During his tenure as director of MOCA, which began in 1982, the museum has sponsored a 1991 Louis Kahn retrospective that traveled to Paris and Gunma, Japan, and a recent show on the work of Frank Israel, a local architect who died of AIDS in June.

And Koshalek has a particularly intimate history with the Disney project. He chaired the committee that first selected the Gehry design, and hosted an exhibition of the architect’s designs in 1988.

Soon after Gehry was awarded the project, Koshalek proposed exhibiting the design in a tent-like structure that would travel to various communities around the city. But the Music Center, which at the time was mired in fund-raising problems of its own, eventually dropped the idea.

Koshalek revived the idea six months ago to coincide with the new fund-raising deadlines. After first approaching Gehry, he asked the Disney family for approval, and only then spoke with the Music Center and the Disney Hall committee. This time, the response was enthusiastic and the committee approached donors about funding the show.

Diane Disney Miller--daughter of Lillian B. Disney--is one of the show’s major sponsors. But the contribution to the show should not be construed as a sign that the Disney family will provide more money: Although no one will say how much Diane Disney Miller has contributed to MOCA’s show, or how much it is costing, her attorneys suggest that her contribution will be the last money the family will give to the concert hall project. Now, says Disney family attorney Ron Gother, “Someone else should really step in.”

Koshalek’s goal is not simply to generate public interest in the design. “The feeling was that unless something happens in the very near future, Disney Hall will never get built, and so we were more than willing to do it,” he said. “We did it on the plaza because we wanted it to be free to the general public, because we felt it was a civic project of importance.”

But the show may also be perceived as a shrewdly calculated fund-raising event. On Oct. 22, a party is scheduled to present the project to prospective donors. The event was organized to solicit money for the project, not for the museum. As Suzanne Marks, Disney Hall’s head of development, put it: “It can only help. Now we have a place to take them.”

Indeed, there has never been an adequate forum for the public to view the work and to prompt a thoughtful discussion of the design’s value as a concert hall, or as architecture. The Music Center--which stands to benefit most from the construction of the concert hall--could be expected to be the project’s obvious champion, but it has been awkwardly reluctant to present Gehry’s work.

Civic leaders have been equally noncommittal. Riordan has lobbied for donors behind the scenes, but he has only recently taken a more public stance in favor of the project. (Avid hockey players, the mayor and Gehry have often faced off together in the rink.)

Millionaire developer, art collector and philanthropist Eli Broad, a close friend of the mayor’s, has also been closely involved in soliciting for the project. “The mayor and I have made a number of calls together to wealthy individuals and foundations,” Broad said. Yet when asked why his foundation has not contributed to the project, Broad answers, “We are just facilitators.”

“The cultural politics is very complex here and the leadership is weak,” said Richard Weinstein, a former dean of UCLA’s school of architecture who was on the Disney Hall selection committee. “And the project had been a big public embarrassment because it had been derailed.”

But by blurring the edges between fund-raising and art, between aesthetics and polemics, the show begs the question: Does the museum simply become another marketing tool for the values of an art world elite?

Koshalek is quick to point out that the museum has long had activist roots and that he has always tried to grapple with issues that directly affect the city. His “Blueprints for Modern Living” show, a 1989 exhibit on case study homes in Los Angeles, contributed to the design of 40 experimental low-cost units in Hollywood. He is planning a show on new graphics for the city’s police and fire departments.

The Disney Hall show is being held on the museum’s plaza so that it will not interfere with exhibitions in the main hall below. “I’ve always had this activist point of view with regard to what a museum can do within its own city,” Koshalek said.

Museum curators have long been advocates for architectural change. Philip Johnson, the dean of American architecture, became a 26-year-old legend in 1932 with his “International Style” show at the Museum of Modern Art. The show advocated an architectural style, while removing it from its original political context. Modernism was reduced to a question of aesthetics.

Here, the intent is not to strip the project of its political and urban context. By placing it on the plaza, the show bluntly emphasizes the project’s civic importance.

Nonetheless, Koshalek says he also wants Gehry’s designs to be judged as art. The installation depicts a formal process, an exuberant struggle on the part of a thoughtful designer. In presenting it in this way, the show attempts to sidestep the controversies that have recently surrounded the project.

Gehry contends that the design always has been misunderstood. “Everyone thinks it looks like some sort of broken crockery. They haven’t seen anything else until now,” he said.

Koshalek argues that his advocacy for the project is essential.

“I think museums tend to run away from that type of dialogue,” Koshalek said. “They won’t take a strong curatorial stand--and we’re willing to do that.”

It is a delicate game. Architecture is both: a formal construction, and a social art that creates models--utopian or not--of how we live and share social space. But great architecture has come out of the most byzantine political conditions. Eventually, the politics are forgotten, but the buildings still stand.