Next in Line for a Bailout? A Major Art Museum

in Art | November 25th, 2008

Almost exact­ly a year ago, I caught up with Jori Finkel, a jour­nal­ist who cov­ers the Los Ange­les arts scene, and we talked about an art-world con­tro­ver­sy that she first wrote about in The New York Times. The con­tro­ver­sy focused on muse­ums seek­ing fund­ing from art gal­leries, which can be a direct con­flict of inter­ests, and her lead exam­ple was L.A.’s Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. Well, it turns out now that MOCA is in seri­ous finan­cial trou­ble, with its annu­al oper­at­ing costs run­ning up to $20 mil­lion and its endow­ment plung­ing below $10 mil­lion. It also turns out that last year’s scan­dal should have sent up some red flags. So we decid­ed to do a fol­low-up inter­view with Jori and get her take on MOCA’s fis­cal cri­sis and bailout plans.

DC: We’ve seen a lot of banks and finan­cial insti­tu­tions look­ing for bailouts, and the more we inves­ti­gate them, the more we real­ize these insti­tu­tions were sim­ply act­ing reck­less­ly. When the his­to­ry of this cri­sis gets writ­ten, I imag­ine that we’ll real­ize that it wasn’t just the banks that mis­man­aged their funds and got caught on a limb. Is that what we’re see­ing here with MOCA?

JF: I’m not aware of any crazy exec­u­tive bonus­es or expen­sive com­pa­ny retreats if that’s what you mean. No, what we’re look­ing at here are two rather clas­sic non­prof­it man­age­ment prob­lems: under-fund­ing and over­spend­ing. L.A. Times crit­ic Christo­pher Knight took MOCA trustees to task for not cough­ing up enough cash, and I’ve also writ­ten a lot about the cri­sis in cul­tur­al phil­an­thropy in L.A. The biggest prob­lem is that Hol­ly­wood types would rather give mon­ey to a cause, envi­ron­men­tal or polit­i­cal, than to the arts.

But it’s naïve just to say the muse­um is under-fund­ed. They were clear­ly over­spend­ing. Their staff bal­looned to 200 while their endow­ment was shrink­ing, and muse­um ambi­tions clear­ly out­stripped their actu­al, legit­i­mate sources of fund­ing. In most busi­ness­es, that would be rea­son to rethink, retrench, down­size. That appar­ent­ly hasn’t hap­pened on a large enough scale here. They seem to have put artis­tic ideals ahead of finan­cial realities–putting what the muse­um should exhib­it ahead of what it can afford to exhib­it.

DC: Dur­ing our inter­view last year, you raised some doubts about how MOCA was fund­ing its major Muraka­mi show. In ret­ro­spect, was that an ear­ly sign that things were going wrong at the muse­um? Were there oth­er red flags?

JF: Yes, I think the fact that MOCA was hus­tling mon­ey for its Muraka­mi show from com­mer­cial deal­ers who rep­re­sent the artist was a sign of finan­cial trou­ble and maybe even des­per­a­tion. It looks in ret­ro­spect like a bright red flag. You raised the per­fect ques­tion last year: Why was MOCA engag­ing in this prac­tice when so many oth­er muse­um lead­ers spoke out against it as uneth­i­cal?

Anoth­er ear­ly warn­ing sign came when the muse­um start­ed clos­ing down the Gef­fen Con­tem­po­rary for a few months at a time. Some reporters are treat­ing this fact like it’s new. It’s not. There was even a time three or four years ago when the MOCA web site car­ried a notice to film scouts—essentially say­ing the Gef­fen is yours for the right price. Can you imag­ine the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art in New York doing this?

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The White Album Turns 40

in Music | November 23rd, 2008

The Bea­t­les’ White Album turned 40 last week. And that put the clas­sic album back in the spot­light, lead­ing crit­ics to revis­it the band’s most exper­i­men­tal and con­tro­ver­sial work. Was it their mas­ter­piece or biggest mess? (Feel free to post your thoughts in the com­ments below.) For one look back, you can lis­ten to this pod­cast from WNY­C’s Sound Check (iTunes — Feed — MP3). And, for good mea­sure, we’re throw­ing in some video clips from the album’s stu­dio ses­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts from Yes­ter­day
What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot
The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z

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Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong with Nunchucks

in Random | November 23rd, 2008

Nope, this is not exact­ly anoth­er piece of vin­tage YouTube good­ness. From what I can piece togeth­er, Nokia is mar­ket­ing a Bruce Lee cell phone in Chi­na, and this is the com­mer­cial that’s back­ing their pro­mo­tion. Need­less to say, there are some dig­i­tal enhance­ments going on here. But it’s amus­ing nonethe­less.

Malcolm Gladwell and The Secret of Success

in Books | November 20th, 2008

Mal­colm Glad­well, the author of The Tip­ping Point and Blink, has a new book out. And it’s almost guar­an­teed to be anoth­er best­seller. Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess takes on an idea at the cen­ter of Amer­i­can mythol­o­gy, the con­cept of the “self-made man.” For Glad­well, suc­cess sto­ries aren’t large­ly the prod­uct of smarts and hard work, as we’re repeat­ed­ly told. More often, they’re “the prod­uct of hid­den advan­tages and extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­ni­ties and cul­tur­al lega­cies that allow [suc­cess­ful indi­vid­u­als] to learn and work hard.” And, as you’ll hear in this inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), good tim­ing (includ­ing the month and decade of your birth), cir­cum­stance, and luck also play a fair­ly impor­tant role. You can buy the new book in print here, or down­load the audio book from Audi­ble for as lit­tle as $7.49.

As a quick aside, The Leonard Lopate show (where we found this inter­view) appears in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast col­lec­tion, which you think­ing types might enjoy.

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Monty Python Channel Launches on YouTube

in Comedy | November 19th, 2008

The Mon­ty Python Chan­nel on YouTube was launched with these words:

“For three years you YouTu­bers have been rip­ping us off, tak­ing tens of thou­sands of our videos and putting them up on YouTube… We know who you are … we know where you live … and we could come after you in ways too hor­ri­ble to men­tion…” “But being the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly nice chaps we are, we’ve fig­ured out a bet­ter way to get our own back. It’s time to take mat­ters in our own hands by launch­ing our very own Mon­ty Python chan­nel on YouTube.”

The videos are offered in high qual­i­ty, straight from the Mon­ty Python vault. Down the road, you’ll get a com­pre­hen­sive, well orga­nized col­lec­tion. Below, we’ve added one of the videos that you’ll find in the mix, the clas­sic Mon­ty Python bit, “Every Sperm is Sacred.” And we’ve also added the Python chan­nel (if you don’t object) to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 80 Cul­tur­al Video Col­lec­tions. 

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Unlocking the European Film Vault

in Film | November 18th, 2008

Thanks to Europa Film Trea­sures, you can spend hours look­ing back through an archive of Euro­pean film. The­ses films range from “com­e­dy to sci­ence fic­tion, from west­erns to ani­ma­tion, from erot­ic to eth­no­log­i­cal movies.” And all films come with a fair amount of back­ground infor­ma­tion. And yes, of course, you can stream these films online and watch them in the com­fort of your own home.

For a taste of what this archive is all about, watch Jön az öcsém, a 1919 film by Michael Cur­tiz, who lat­er went on to direct Casablan­ca! For more, enter the gen­er­al col­lec­tion here.

via Boing Boing

The YouTube Presidency

in Current Affairs, Web/Tech, YouTube | November 16th, 2008

We’re about to wit­ness the begin­ning of the YouTube Pres­i­den­cy, as The Wash­ing­ton Post has dubbed it. When Barack Oba­ma takes office in late Jan­u­ary, he plans to give a new twist to a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion. The week­ly pres­i­den­tial radio address will now “air” on YouTube, mean­ing that you’ll be able to access the pres­i­den­t’s mes­sages in video, when­ev­er you want, on one of Amer­i­ca’s most traf­ficked web sites. The upshot? Some­one may actu­al­ly lis­ten to these week­ly mes­sages.

This move is part of Oba­ma’s effort to use tech­nol­o­gy to com­mu­ni­cate more direct­ly with the Amer­i­can pub­lic. It’s a way of bring­ing FDR’s fire­side chats into the 21st cen­tu­ry. In addi­tion to har­ness­ing the pow­er of Web 2.0, you can expect to find a lap­top on his Oval Office desk, a first for any pres­i­dent. And, if Oba­ma has his way, he might get to hang on to his Black­ber­ry as well. (See this piece in the NY Times.)

In the mean­time, here’s first of the YouTube videos that Oba­ma has launched dur­ing the tran­si­tion. Watch it below:

Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix Drummer, 1969

in Music | November 16th, 2008

Mitch Mitchell, the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence, died late last week. Here we have him solo­ing in con­cert in Swe­den, 1969. More on his pass­ing here.

Funny, If It Wasn’t So Sad

in Current Affairs | November 14th, 2008

Sev­er­al years ago, I had lunch with the for­mer head of a large invest­ment bank who talked about how Wall Street had a built-in bull­ish bias, and any­one who goes against the grain, does so at their own per­il. Below you’ll find a good exam­ple of that. Here we have Peter Schiff, head of Euro Pacif­ic Cap­i­tal, sound­ing the alarms repeat­ed­ly on Fox “News” in 2006-07, mak­ing pre­dic­tions that turned out to be remark­ably right, and watch the scorn that gets heaped on him. Imag­ine if the grown ups had both­ered to mind the store dur­ing the past decade, to see some of the obvi­ous prob­lems mount­ing. We might all be breath­ing a bit more eas­i­ly today.

via The Dai­ly Dish

Decoding the Obama Victory: The Geography of US Presidential Elections

in Uncategorized | November 13th, 2008

We have reached the final week of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions course. This week, Mar­tin Lewis slices and dices the elec­toral results of the ’08 elec­tion and high­lights the big and poten­tial­ly far-reach­ing shifts in US vot­ing pat­terns. No doubt, this is one of the more detailed analy­ses that you’ll find on the web. You can watch the last lec­ture in high­er res­o­lu­tion on iTune­sU here, or watch it below on YouTube. The com­plete course will be per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es under Geog­ra­phy and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence.