Art Window to the World

Since 1981, Paul Schimmel has been organizing provocative exhibitions in Southern California, first at the old Newport Harbor Art Museum and, for the last seven years, as chief curator of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He’s done impressive retrospectives of sculptors Chris Burden and Tony Cragg, but his specialty has been big thematic surveys of transitional episodes in postwar American art, such as 1986’s “The Interpretive Link: Abstract Surrealism Into Abstract Expressionism, Works on Paper, 1938-1948” and 1992’s “Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955-1962.”

Schimmel’s most widely known show, however, was “Helter Skelter: Los Angeles Art in the 1990s,” seen at MOCA in 1992. In addition to solidifying the reputations of such major artists as Mike Kelley and Lari Pittman, the show helped catapult Paul McCarthy, Charles Ray and Nancy Rubins to international prominence. His next big show--his first in five years--opens Feb. 8 and represents a return to transitional themes, this time on a global scale. “Out of Actions: Between Object and Performance, 1949-1979” looks at the relationships between performance art and object-making in the work of more than 100 artists from 20 countries.

In his office at MOCA, Schimmel, 43, talked about the shifting nature of art, museums and L.A. in a newly globalizing culture.

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Question: What contemporary art exhibition that hasn’t been done would you like to see?

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Answer: I’m very excited by a whole generation of artists that is coming out of an academic, university environment, to a larger degree than has ever happened before. I’m interested in a speculative show that would take that as an organizing principle: If you identify the 25 leading art communities globally and the institutions in those communities where these artists have been educated, it could be an interesting way to look at what is happening internationally at this moment.

[But], really, my answer has less to do with a specific exhibition than with a general approach to exhibition-making. Until we can rely less on corporate and foundation funding and more on internal endowments, the ability of curators and institutions to lead rather than reflect or follow the culture will be hindered.

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Q: Do museums need a “sure thing” for exhibitions?

A: Increasingly. It’s interesting that, for example, to help support the enormous expansion in operations and facilities that [New York’s] Guggenheim Museum has had, they are doing big monographic surveys of leading figures who emerged in the 1960s. There’s nothing essentially wrong with that, and we at MOCA have participated in a number of their exhibitions. But this isn’t an opportunity to forge ahead as a contemporary art museum.

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Q: There are now big international survey shows of new art organized regularly in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Italy, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Cuba; do they serve a useful purpose?

A: I was thinking of how I was introduced to [Cuban sculptor] Kcho’s work. This is a guy who had really come up on the circuit of big international shows. It began in Havana, then was seen in Sa~o Paulo, then wins the award in Kwangju [South Korea], and is finally shown in New York [at Barbara Gladstone Gallery]. There are now spokes of influence outside the New York-centric art market, and that is really positive.

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Q: What position does L.A. occupy in this newly globalized mix?

A: The best ever. First, and this may come as a surprise, I think it’s because of all the art schools here. They’ve provided a foundation for the creative community that no other infrastructure comes even close to providing--financial support, places to develop, opportunities to take longer-term and less-commercial approaches to art practice. It’s a constant ground for producing new generations that keep revitalizing the art scene from the bottom up.

That’s a great strength. Our art scene is nurtured with all these young artists who are emerging and who push the ones above them up. Ultimately, Los Angeles artists in the ‘90s have proven to be more influential collectively, on an international level, than any generation preceding it. All of a sudden people have started to talk much more about L.A. as it really is today: an incredibly complex community that is what you imagine New York was in the 1920s--an extraordinarily diverse immigrant community, not just from around the United States, which is what it always had, but internationally. It’s not the myth of Hollywood that is the center of this culture.

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Q: What are some of the weaknesses you see in the scene?

A: Clearly it’s a problem when your best and brightest do not feel a profound sense of loyalty to the community in which they work. I understand and appreciate that as an artist you work for two or three years on a body of work and you want to have it seen in the best circumstance. But it is disturbing when many of the most interesting shows of new work made by L.A. artists premiere in Europe or New York.

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Q: Is the decision to show elsewhere first a market-driven one?

A: Los Angeles has the most vital contemporary collecting scene of any city outside New York. We have a huge base of collectors. But, New York and London are crossroads. If you took Europe out of the London market, those galleries would collapse. You can’t survive with a gallery on an international level unless you have an international clientele. I would hope that someday, as Asia develops, and Latin America, that Los Angeles [galleries] would increasingly become an international destination.

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Q: Many have written off the National Endowment for the Arts. Is a severely crippled NEA better than no NEA?

A: I think it would be a disaster if the NEA disappeared. People say that’s the only way it can come back, but it would be so much worse [with nothing]. I would be hard-pressed to imagine my 20 years as a curator, right up to the funding for “Out of Actions: Between Object and Performance.”

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Q: What place does the new Getty Center occupy in L.A.’s art life?

A: On an international level, the Getty does an enormous amount to change perceptions about L.A.--not as a creative community, because, between contemporary art and Hollywood, there is a wide perception that this is a very creative community, but that we have assumed a larger sense of cultural responsibility.

For me, it’s already been an extraordinary resource for areas that MOCA is involved with. Their archives deal with aspects of Latin American art, Fluxus activity, aspects of the 1950s and 1960s. After the Museum of Modern Art, it’s the second-best national resource for primary research in these areas--which is staggering, since it didn’t even exist a handful of years ago.

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CROSSROADS

The daily Calendar section is presenting a series of interviews, which began Dec. 29 and will conclude Thursday, with arts and entertainment leaders. Here is the schedule:

Dec. 29

Film: Harvey Weinstein

Dec. 30

Architecture: Zaha Hadid

Dec. 31

Television: Martha Williamson

Jan. 1

Restaurants: Nancy Silverton

Jan. 2

Theater: Peter Schneider

Jan. 3

Jazz: Bruce Lundvall

Monday

Music: Tan Dun

Today

Art: Paul Schimmel

Wednesday

Pop music: Danny Goldberg

Thursday

Dance: Arthur Mitchell