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

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.