An Old Master Builder

To hear him tell it, the story of J. Patrice Marandel’s arrival on the staff of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is a cliffhanger with a happy ending.

The tale begins in May 1993, when Marandel was the veteran curator of European paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts. An affable Frenchman--who sometimes claims he is nobody and knows no one, but is actually renowned and very well connected--he came to the United States in his early 20s and quickly rose in curatorial circles at prominent institutions, moving from the Rhode Island School of Design to the Art Institute of Chicago, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. In 1980, when he landed in Detroit, he thought he’d stay about three years. But before he knew it, he had settled in.

“Three years became five, five became 10, and 10 became 13,” Marandel said in a lively discussion over a Cobb salad lunch in a mid-Wilshire restaurant. “I finally decided it was time to get more rooted in Detroit. Although I had a beautiful apartment, I decided to buy a house. I had dinner one night with a real estate agent, a friend of friends, who said he could get me a fantastic house, and we agreed to meet the following day.” But before Marandel even got to see his potential new home, he received a telephone call from a stranger by the name of Michael Shapiro.

A former curator at the St. Louis Museum of Art, Shapiro had been catapulted from relative obscurity into the national limelight about six months earlier when he became LACMA’s director. His call to Detroit seemed to come out of the blue, but he had polled the higher echelons of art museums to find the perfect candidate to fill one of LACMA’s most prestigious positions, curator of European painting and sculpture. Over and over, the name that came up was “Marandel.”

Intrigued by Shapiro’s call, Marandel agreed to visit the museum in Los Angeles. “I called the real estate agent and said, ‘Hold off. I’m not sure I want to sign the dotted line yet. Let me go to Los Angeles.’ I had never met Michael Shapiro, but I was thrilled that my colleagues thought so highly of me. I came here. I loved it, and I was offered a job,” he said.

For a while it seemed that the unexpected call had propelled Marandel in a new direction. He would leave a venerable museum that had fallen on hard times. His new employer would be a much younger institution that had grown enormously in the 1980s but had weathered cutbacks in funding and an administrative void during the early ‘90s. There were undeniable problems at LACMA, but the museum offered a special lure.

The Ahmanson Foundation, which has supported LACMA since its inception, established a special fund in 1972 for the acquisition of European paintings and sculptures. Unlike many of his colleagues who have to raise most or all of their acquisition funds, Marandel would have an enviable opportunity to build the museum’s collection with Ahmanson money. The museum does not disclose the purchase price of acquisitions, but the foundation gives several million dollars’ worth of Old Master artworks to LACMA each year.

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Marandel accepted the museum’s offer, bought a house in Los Angeles--instead of Detroit--and began packing. But early one morning at the end of August, about six weeks before he was scheduled to begin working in Los Angeles, he got another unforgettable phone call. This time the message wasn’t merely surprising; it was downright shocking.

A friend from Houston called to ask if he had seen the New York Times that day. Marandel had perused the newspaper but missed a notice of Shapiro’s resignation, after less than a year at the helm.

“I panicked immediately,” Marandel said. “But it was too early to call Los Angeles, so I waited until it was 7 o’clock in the morning there. Then I called Mary Levkoff [assistant curator of European painting and sculpture at LACMA]. She usually doesn’t open an eye until 9:30, I think, but she was kind enough to pick up the phone, and she was very reassuring.

“Shortly after that, I got two calls from trustees, one from Dan Belin and one from Linda Resnick, who both reassured me that they wanted me to come to Los Angeles, no matter what. The deal was still on, so I came here. It was weird, but I had been through weirder situations in my life. And it has worked out very nicely, thanks to everyone around me who has been very supportive.”

Marandel’s responsibilities at the museum include organizing and coordinating temporary exhibitions as well as shopping, but he is credited with being an unusually savvy acquisitor. And he readily admits that expanding and shaping the collection is the most rewarding part of his job.

“I can’t do everything, but as long as I have donors who are willing to help me, it’s important to build the permanent collection, because that’s what remains as a legacy for young people,” he said.

What’s more, he doesn’t go along with conventional wisdom about a shortage of Old Masters on the market. “There are still plenty of things to buy,” he said. “There are wonderful opportunities to build an attractive collection with things that are obvious and others that are less obvious but very exciting.”

His colleagues--and competitors--applaud his efforts. “Patrice is one of the great curators in the country. One can see that in his acquisitions,” said Scott Schaefer, curator of paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum and a predecessor of Marandel at LACMA, from 1980 to 1987. “I’ve always said that the Norton Simon Museum has the best collection of European paintings in Los Angeles and LACMA has the most interesting collection. The Getty is somewhere in between.”

Although the L.A. county museum doesn’t have trademark examples by all the best-known artists, the quality of its Old Masters is very high, Schaefer said. “Every painting is interesting in some quirky way or in terms of subject matter. And Patrice has continued that on a grand scale.”

LACMA President Andrea Rich also praises Marandel. “Patrice is enormously valuable to us. What he, with Ahmanson support, has done is really amazing. He has made that part of our collection one of the strongest in the country. It’s difficult to do, so late in the game, but one after the other, he finds the works.”

Marandel’s latest reason for thinking he made the right move in coming to Los Angeles is a new addition to LACMA’s permanent collection, “The Mocking of Christ,” an early 17th century painting by Dutch artist Gerrit van Honthorst. The painting only recently went on view in the Ahmanson building, but Marandel discovered it in March at the European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands. And naturally, he has a tale to tell about that experience too.

“Every painting we buy has a funny story attached to it,” he said. “When I walked into the fair I saw Adam Williams, a dealer from New York who is a very nice guy. He said there was only one painting I had to see. Then he literally pulled me by the hand and took shortcuts from his booth to the booth that had the Honthorst. He was right. I looked at the rest of the fair and there was really nothing as good as that.”

The painting--a dramatic composition that casts Christ’s face and bare chest in the brilliant yellow light of a flaming candle, while leaving his tormentors in shadows--was offered by Milan dealer Rob Smeets at a price of about $3 million. Marandel arranged to buy the Honthorst for an undisclosed sum with Ahmanson funds. But he was amused by Williams’ determination and wondered if he had a financial interest in the sale. “One never knows who owns paintings because several dealers sometimes buy them together,” Marandel said. “So I said, ‘I hope you have a share in this,’ but he didn’t.”

Even without Williams’ guidance, it’s extremely unlikely that Marandel would have missed the Honthorst. A star attraction at the fair, it enhances the museum’s holding of Caravaggio-style pictures, including such favorites as “Magdalen With the Smoking Flame” by Georges de La Tour.

“I remember talking to Michael Shapiro about the need for a painting of that type, so it’s something I had been looking for, for a long time,” Marandel said. “A few candidates had come along, but not the right one. This one just hit me as the right picture.”

The Getty’s Schaefer agrees. “I just saw the Honthorst, and it’s far superior to ours,” he said, referring to the Getty’s painting, “Christ Crowned With Thorns,” by the same artist.

Coincidentally, “The Mocking of Christ” hangs in a gallery facing Rembrandt’s “The Raising of Lazarus,” the first of 70 European Old Master artworks acquired with Ahmanson funds since 1972. Then came “Holy Family” by Fra Bartolommeo, “Allegory of Navigation” by Veronese, “Soap Bubbles” by Jean-Simeon Chardin, “Madonna and Child” by Jacopo Bellini and the La Tour, among many other works.

During Marandel’s tenure, the Ahmanson Foundation has provided for the acquisition of paintings such as “The Martyrdom of St. Cecilia” by 17th century Italian artist Carlo Saraceni; “The Virgin and Child With Saints and the Annunciation,” a 15th century Sienese work by Giovanni di Paolo; “Stairs and Fountain in the Park of a Roman Villa,” a large landscape by 18th century French painter Hubert Robert; “Plague in an Ancient City” by 17th century Flemish artist Michael Sweerts; and “A Musical Party” by Valentin de Boulogne, a 17th century French follower of Caravaggio.

Meanwhile, Marandel also has been busy with exhibitions. He is working on a couple of Old Master shows, and he was the local curator of “Van Gogh’s Van Goghs: Masterpieces From the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam,” the blockbuster that inaugurated the temporary exhibition galleries at LACMA West.

“I was not involved in planning the Van Gogh show, but when the boxes arrived, it was mine to deal with,” he said. Among other things, that meant giving 39 talks on the exhibition. But he insists that hosting the phenomenally popular show was a “pleasant” experience for him personally and a great benefit to the museum.

“For us, it was really wonderful to have that show,” he said. “It was nice to see new people at the museum who finally realize we exist. And it was nice, for a change, to hear people at parties say, ‘Have you been to the Van Gogh exhibition?’ instead of ‘Have you been to the Getty?’ ”

The second show at LACMA West, opening today and continuing through Nov. 29, is another traveling show in Marandel’s charge: “Around Impressionism: French Paintings From the National Gallery of Art.” It consists of 69 works selected from a broader sampling of the National Gallery’s collection that recently appeared in Japan, Marandel said.

Looking back on his route to LACMA, Marandel said that popular depictions of history led him to art. “In France, in my day, action movies for kids were mostly about the past, ‘The Three Musketeers’ and things like that. I saw that these people lived in nice places, like chateaux, and had things that we didn’t have at home. So I thought, well, there’s another world out there.”

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Marandel was born and raised in Paris, but his father was an engineer and his family wasn’t particularly arts-oriented. His older sister took him on his first trip to the Louvre as a child, but he was soon going on his own. “I thought it was terrific. I’m living proof that you don’t have to drag kids to museums,” he said.

Although Marandel planned to study history, he veered off into ethnology and sociology during his college days in the 1960s at the Sorbonne. “I was very much interested, and still am, in what was then called primitive cultures,” he said. “But then I realized that I was mainly interested in the art aspect of it, so one thing led to another until I got into art history, and that clicked.”

In need of a job, he landed a position in the education department at the Louvre. “I was basically answering the phone and booking tours. But it was a very good entry into this world,” he said. “I had access to the collection and very quickly began to give tours because there was a shortage of guides. The curators were pretty friendly and they gave tours for the staff, so I learned that way too. It was fun, and I met some of the people who became big players in the field.”

One day at the Louvre he saw a memo offering paid summer internships at American museums, organized by the American Federation of Arts. “The condition was to speak English, which I did not speak at all, but I lied and I got one of those scholarships,” he said.

In 1967, at the age of 22, Marandel boarded a ship in Le Havre, with nine other young people from France, England, Sweden and the Netherlands. “We were sent to various places, but I got the good ticket, the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” he said. At the end of the summer, the interns gathered in New York, then toured museums from Boston to Washington, D.C. By then Marandel’s English had improved greatly. “It was a matter of survival,” he said.

He returned to France, but with “a taste of more freedom and fun in America.” So in 1969 he secured a one-year post-graduate research scholarship at Yale University, which provided travel funds that allowed him to visit museums all across the country.

At the end of the year, he moved to New York, where he wrote art criticism for European magazines. He also organized an exhibition of monochromatic paintings that was shown at Rice University in Houston and sponsored by art patron Dominique de Menil.

With the help of friends, he then landed a full-time job at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. “Mind you, I had basically been a secretary at the Louvre and done a bit of freelance work,” Marandel said. “But suddenly in my first job I was chief curator. I should have at least taken a few steps along the line, but in those days you could do that. I feel sorry for the kids nowadays who can’t jump like that. It was much more fun.”

As he became better connected in the art world, one job led to another. In 1973 he accepted an invitation to be curator of painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. “I spent five years in Chicago, and that’s where I really became a curator,” he said. “It was a great place to learn.”

In a fit of restlessness, Marandel left Chicago in 1978 and became a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. “I hated it. I really couldn’t take the heat,” he said. “My mind, or whatever is up there, melted completely. I could not cope with the city, with anything.” In 1980 he grabbed an opportunity to move to Detroit.

After six years in Los Angeles, Marandel says he has loved the city since his first trip here in 1969. “Of course, it’s very seductive,” he said. “And then very quickly I had friends who had moved here. I always thought it was a place that had a lot of possibilities. By the time I got here, the possibilities in my field had been put in place; it was very attractive to come because of the Ahmanson Foundation. And at this point, it has been beyond my expectations. It has been an extraordinary relationship.” *