LA Philanthropy Watch

On August 31 (while I was away) LACMA Director Michael Govan sat down with members of Save Film at LACMA – at a meeting dubbed the “popcorn summit” – to discuss creating a more viable and robust film program.  Last July LACMA announced that its film program would be suspended in October; subsequently, after securing funding for an extension, the museum announced that the program would continue through June 2010.

In an interview with the LA Times, Mr. Govan explained that a new film program, as envisaged, required at least $5 million in new funding to create an endowment.  The Museum announced development of a Film Club as “a $50 add-on” to LACMA membership and noted that most of the 2,700 signatories of the Restore LACMA’s Film Program petition were not museum members.  Meanwhile, Save Film at LACMA reprinted a Wall St. Journal op-ed that contrasted the museum’s tentative support for film with its reported commitment to “grand projects like Jeff Koons’s ‘Train,’ which will dangle a full-scale, 70-foot-long replica of a 1943 steam locomotive from a 160-foot-tall crane. The cost of what is being reported as the most expensive work ever commissioned by a museum? Twenty-five million dollars.”

LA Philanthropy Watch initially posted on this issue on July 29.

Update – Comment moved into post – Debra Levine – September 11, 2009

Hello. We are glad that the philanthropic community is following the LACMA story. Ours is a cautionary tale for a publicly funded entity to stray far — indeed to rupture — from public support. The film program was not broken; from a cultural and intellectual perspective, it was world class. It was, however, in need of better positioning and marketing. Our movement — run on the internet for zero $$ cost, the only cost has been our labor — has contributed strongly to a higher level of public awareness of this program. We continue to monitor Mr. Govan’s scheme for film at the museum and wish him the best.
Thank you,
Debra Levine, co-founder, Save Film at LACMA