Local Museum Talent Unfairly Gets the Brush

The amazing transformation of L.A.’s art life during the last 20 years has manifested itself in many ways. Among the more notable has been the emergence of a large, unusually gifted pool of art museum professionals working in the city. Home to five art museums of international stature, as well as to a number of smaller venues of considerable note, Los Angeles claims some of the most talented and accomplished museum people anywhere.

Through no fault of their own, however, art museum professionals here also seem to suffer a disabling affliction, which I call the Hometown Disadvantage. A relative to the infamous glass ceiling--the stubborn mind-set that stops women from ascending to the highest rungs of the corporate ladder--the Hometown Disadvantage represents a disjunction between old perceptions and new realities.

It works like this: Despite demonstrated accomplishment that puts them at the forefront of the field, senior curators and art museum administrators working in L.A. almost never have a chance for advancement to the director’s chair at other museums in the city. For that, out-of-town candidates rule.

Consider the current case of UCLA. The university is entering the homestretch in a wide-ranging search for a successor to Henry T. Hopkins, who is slated to step down on July 1 from the directorship of UCLA’s Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center. Hopkins was instrumental in negotiating the 1994 merger between the privately funded Hammer Museum and the school, where he was chair of the art department and director of its small but venerable Wight Art Gallery.

The search for a successor began in October, and UCLA hopes to name the new director between the end of this month and the end of summer. Indications are that, true to the Hometown Disadvantage, not a single potential candidate currently working in L.A. has been formally approached or interviewed for the job.

Big universities can be downright druidical in their cloistered operations. And maybe simple provincialism explains UCLA’s apparent inability to see what’s blossomed in its own backyard. Whatever the case, the Hometown Disadvantage suggests deficiencies where none exist, based on outdated patterns of experience.

For good or ill, the Hammer job is one of few at UCLA that will have a direct impact on the cultural life of the larger city. Here’s why: In about four years, the Hammer is slated to gain access to an acquisition endowment estimated at $40 million, the result of a controversial 1994 sale of a Renaissance manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci. The huge fund will be much larger than acquisition endowments at much bigger art museums nationwide--and more than five times those at the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art combined. Instantly, the Hammer will catapult to the front ranks among American university museums that buy art.

The school is being tight-lipped about the director’s search. (Pauline Yu, dean of the humanities division of UCLA’s College of Letters and Science and chair of the faculty search committee, refused to speak to a reporter, citing through a spokesman the confidentiality of the process.) However, among the gifted out-of-town candidates currently believed to be contenders for the post are Ann Philbin, director of the Drawing Center in New York; Linda Shearer, director of the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass.; and Tom Sokolowski, director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Talented individuals all--even though none has a track record in building a distinguished public collection of art.

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Collection-building is difficult, requiring unusual skills and experience, but it’s not the only task a new director will face. With an annual operating budget between $5 million and $6 million and a full- and part-time staff that numbers about 120, the museum is a sizable administrative operation. Construction on the Hammer’s ungainly 1990 building in Westwood Village was never finished, and so far the exhibition program has been spotty.

Here’s how published ads placed in professional journals by UCLA describe the desired candidate: The new director “should possess significant museum background and excellence in a leadership capacity, including curatorial responsibilities and demonstrated success in fund-raising, donor relations and audience development.” It’s the usual boilerplate, with an added request for academic abilities appropriate to a university museum.

Although it’s mentioned, no emphasis is placed on the critically important development of an acquisition program. Nor is a particular field of art-history specialization required. (Given the nature of the Hammer, it’s likely that the director will specialize in some aspect of 20th century art.) According to the university, the position was widely advertised, and members of the university community and the larger art community were solicited for names of possible candidates.

Some were invited to apply--a wise idea, since candidates of stature shouldn’t always be expected to respond to an open casting call. Out of about 100 possibilities, several candidates have been invited to campus for initial interviews.

Reading the ad, I immediately thought of four obvious museum professionals locally who would make ideal candidates for serious consideration. (You might think of more.) My list included Anne Ayres, director of the gallery at Otis College of Art and Design; Stephanie Barron, vice president and senior curator at LACMA; Lisa Lyons, former director of the Lannan Foundation and currently consultant to the Getty Trust; and Paul Schimmel, chief curator at MOCA.

I called them all up, and my worst fears were confirmed. Not one had heard a peep from the search committee.

Sources indicate that at least a few of those on my list of the Hometown Disadvantaged were also on lists of recommended candidates provided to the search committee, which is composed of seven UCLA faculty members and two trustees, one each from the Hammer Museum and the UCLA Foundation. Apparently those recommendations languish in a file cabinet somewhere, because the committee has so far chosen not to pursue anyone currently working in L.A.

When a new director is named this summer, it will be interesting to compare his or her record with those among peers in L.A. who haven’t even been considered for the post. Perhaps the faculty-based search committee is looking toward the Northeast because it simply lacks self-confidence, since art museums are not their area of expertise.

Let me be perfectly clear. I am not saying here that the directorship of the Hammer should only go to an L.A. candidate. That would be foolishly parochial.

Neither am I saying that one or more of the out-of-town candidates currently being considered couldn’t be a superlative director. Although none are more qualified than overlooked candidates here, some do have the potential to do a first-rate job.

What I am saying is this: By acting as if L.A. is a cultural backwater in terms of the museum profession, UCLA seems insecure and out of touch with the community in which it resides. In this artistically vibrant, cosmopolitan city, it’s high time we retired the old Hometown Disadvantage.