LA MOCA ADDS FOUR NEW TRUSTEES
The Los Angeles Times’s David Ng reports that the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is continuing to beef up its board of trustees after the loss of several members during the museum’s much-publicized financial troubles in late 2008.
On Wednesday, the museum said its board has elected four new members. The new trustees are Lauren King, a philanthropist and residential designer; Timothy J. Leiweke, the president and chief executive of the sports and entertainment conglomerate AEG; Catherine Opie, the photographer and visual artist; and Donald Tang, the founder and chief executive of CITIC Securities International Partners.
Tang has had close ties with Eli Broad, who also sits on the MoCA board. Until a year ago, Tang was also a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Opie’s photographs have been exhibited at MoCA, and some of her work is part of the museum’s permanent collection.
MoCA announced in December that Victor Pinchuk, Peter Brant, and Steven Mnuchin were joining the board. In the past, trustees have had to pay a minimum of $75,000 in annual dues to the museum, with additional contributions in their first year. MoCA did not say Wednesday if the new trustees were bound by this rule.
Wednesday’s announcement comes a little more than a year after the Times reported that nine trustees had exited the MoCA board in the wake of the institution’s near financial collapse. Since then, MoCA has turned around its finances with a big helping hand from Broad, who extended the museum a thirty-million-dollar bailout offer. In January, MoCA announced that New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch would assume the role of director of the museum in June.
Deitch will assume the reins from Charles E. Young, who took over the leadership of the museum in an interim capacity after the resignation of Jeremy Strick. MoCA said that in the past fifteen months, it has raised more than $67 million and added fourteen new trustees to its board.
