LACMA has new post to fill

The Art Newspaper has posted a job opening for a deputy director of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to lead the yet-to-be-built Broad Contemporary Art Museum and a planned program for new media, photography and film.

The posting says the new deputy director will have the opportunity to appoint up to four curators and will develop contemporary art programs throughout the museum.

The search launches an initiative, as the ad puts it, “that will establish the institution as the nation’s first major encyclopedic museum to make contemporary art one of its principal areas of activity.” The deputy director will be expected to integrate contemporary art into LACMA’s broad collections and serve as “the museum’s advocate in the dynamic art world of L.A., which has, through its artists, art schools, galleries, collectors and institutions, emerged as one of the great centers of contemporary art in the world,” the ad says.

“This is going to be a great position,” LACMA President and Director Andrea Rich said, noting that the deputy director will play a much broader role than overseeing the 60,000-square-foot building funded by philanthropist and contemporary art collector Eli Broad, expected to open in late 2007.

The proposed program for new media, photography and film, for example, will probably be housed at LACMA West, she said.

“What makes the initiative unique,” Rich said, “is that contemporary art will be seen in the context of history, so there will be a continuity and an interconnectedness.” LACMA’s program will be quite different from those at specialized institutions, such as Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, she said.

The Art Newspaper posting instructs candidates to send applications to museum trustee Peter Norton, at his office in Santa Monica. Norton -- like Broad, a major contemporary art collector -- is head of the search committee, but he will not choose the deputy director, Rich said.

“This is one of those wonderful moments,” she said, “where, with a new program and a new position, some of our new trustees who are very into contemporary art can roll up their sleeves and get involved. They are doing a search in the classic, university way. They will come up with a slate of candidates and present it to me and I’ll decide.”

The person chosen will join two other deputy directors at LACMA: Nancy Thomas, a curator of ancient art who handles many administrative affairs, and Bruce Roberts, an American art specialist who oversees programs, including exhibitions and publications.

Salaries of the new deputy director and curators, which have not been disclosed, will be paid by the museum with funds raised privately, not contributed by the county, Rich said.