MoCA's Aftermath/Strick's Next Life

LA MoCA announced a string of layoff’s last Friday. The LA Times covered the story:

The cash-strapped Museum of Contemporary Art is trimming its staff by 20% and cutting operating costs in an effort to reduce its annual expenses by approximately $4.4 million, the museum announced Friday.

The cuts mean the elimination of 32 jobs — 16 full-time, 16 part-time — across all departments, out of a staff of about 160. Staffers who have been laid off were notified Friday.

Although he declined to name individuals who had lost their jobs or to break down the total by job category, MOCA Chief Executive Charles E. Young said in an interview Friday that the largest staff reductions were in the curatorial support, educational and development departments. However, no curators or senior staff were let go. [ . . . ]

Said Young: “I think these cuts are going to enable us to get MOCA on a sound financial footing — that is, operating within its income — and it will not have the problems that have existed in the past several years and generated the wave of comment we have had over the past several months.”

Meanwhile, from Carol Vogel‘s story covering Jeremy Strick’s appointment as director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas:

The search for a new director began shortly after Steven A. Nash resigned in March 2007 to become director of the Palm Springs Art Museum. David J. Haemisegger, president of the board, said the center had hired a search firm and had assessed what kind of director it needed. “Jeremy was far and away the best person,” he said. “There was immediate chemistry.”

“As a young curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, he had worked on a show of the Nasher’s sculpture and had gotten to know them,” Mr. Haemisegger added.

Asked whether he was concerned about Mr. Strick’s track record with finances given the situation in Los Angeles, Mr. Haemisegger said, “We clearly did our due diligence, and nothing caused us to back away.”

Ex-director of Los Angeles Museum Heads to Dallas (New York Times)

MoCA Trimming Staff by 20% (LA Times)