Weekend at the Movies To End Run at LACMA
In a July 28 memo to staff, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan announced that LACMA will be ending its weekend film program by November. The LA Times, which features this story on page one, reports that the museum’s “cinematic centerpiece” has lost money in recent years as audiences have diminished. The Times’ story notes a competitive environment today – from scores of film festivals to DVD sales of art-house films – that differs vastly from the cultural milieu of four decades ago, when LACMA began screening film classics.
“As we scale back our budgets, this is a good time to slow programs and spend more time thinking about how to build a more sustainable long-term foundation for the presentation of film at LACMA,” said Mr. Govan in his memo. “My hope is to reemerge with a major commitment to film that helps define LACMA’s curatorial mission.”
Cari Beauchamp, writer, historian and documentary filmmaker, offers scathing criticism of this decision at Native Intelligence (one of the LA Observed blogs). She reviews the unique contributions of the LACMA program, praises Ian Bernie as a “master curator of films,” questions Mr. Govan’s claims of million-dollar losses, and offers critical commentary on the way LACMA has treated film audiences. Most intriguing of all, she reports hearing that the announced closing may be “only a ruse to get people to pay attention – that by shutting it down maybe something better will bloom.”
Update 1 (July 30, 2009): In today’s LA Times, Kenneth Turan inveighs against LACMA’s decision to shutter its film program, suggesting that is demonstrates “contempt for the current programming….”
His commentary parallels Cari Beauchamp’s. In addition to a special appreciation of LACMA’s film program, both Ms. Beauchamp and Mr. Turan share a joy of film as an art form with an intimate connection to Los Angeles.
Cari Beauchamp wrote, “Part of the joy of LACMA films is the gems that you would see nowhere else. Yet the message from on high is loud and clear: Films are not considered ‘art’ at LACMA.”
Mr. Turan comments, “To shut this program down, in Los Angeles of all places, betrays both a disdain for the most vibrant of popular arts and a demeaning narrowness of vision about what Los Angeles wants and needs.”
Update 2 (from August 7, 2009 LA Times): “In the wake of the chorus of disapproval that greeted last week’s announcement that he was red-lighting the 40-year-old weekend film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, museum Director Michael Govan has some good news: Potential donors have stepped up, interested in helping underwrite the series.” Editor’s note: See Save Film @ LACMA blog for continuing coverage of this issue.
