Folk art museum director ousted

After less than a year in the job, Peter Tokofsky, executive director of the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum, has been forced to resign, prompting an exodus of board members.

“It was a controversial decision, but the majority ... voted to make the change,” said Frank Wyle, chairman of the board.

Describing Tokofsky’s departure as a result of “differences we couldn’t resolve,” museum treasurer Wally Marks III said. “It wasn’t a perfect match.”

Five of the museum’s 28 board members resigned in the aftermath of Tokofsky’s departure.

“There’s definitely a split in the board and, yes, people have resigned,” Marks said. “We’re sad, and they’ll be missed.”

Last week, Jim Goodwin, an art consultant who spent 10 years at the Pacific Design Center as marketing director, took over as director of the Wilshire Boulevard museum, which is run in conjunction with the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Tokofsky, a former professor of world arts and culture at UCLA, wouldn’t comment on the circumstances surrounding his departure but said the museum “is vitally important to a community like Los Angeles.

“The focus on vernacular traditions in art is so valuable,” he added.

“That was why I took the job and that was what we were trying to accomplish with our ... exhibitions.”

The Craft and Folk Art Museum, across the street from the La Brea Tar Pits and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has been home to the annual International Festival of Masks.

“Fade,” a survey exhibition of African American artists in Los Angeles, is on view at the museum through Feb. 29.

The city’s Cultural Affairs Department leases space in the museum for a craft and folk art program and contributes $135,000 yearly toward salaries.

The museum, in turn, must raise $100,000 and report to the Cultural Affairs Department quarterly. The museum has discretion over the hiring and firing of its director.

“Today, in my opinion, the museum hovers somewhere between the Victorian cabinet of curiosities and the Community Arts Outreach programs, which proliferate with varying success throughout our cities,” architect Scott Johnson wrote in a letter to the board of directors in late December. “I believe we need to identify more clearly who the museum is and who it serves. And we must either be archival or be looking into the hearts and minds of our future visitors. To me, there is no viability for the space in between.” Johnson resigned from the board on Jan. 16.

Launched in 1965 by Edith Wyle as a restaurant and crafts shop, it was formerly known as the Egg and the Eye. It was reorganized as a nonprofit museum in 1973 and flourished through the mid-1980s.

But the museum lay dormant during a $5.5-million renovation in the early 1990s before reopening in 1995. After years of ill-fated expansion schemes and a failed effort to merge with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the facility was closed at the end of 1997, and its collection was sold at auction for about $282,000, less than the estimated value of $300,000 to $500,000.

The museum was revived in 1999, under the administration of the Cultural Affairs Department, on a much smaller scale. Its operating budget was cut from about $1.5 million to about $350,000 a year.