July
28
Recession Red: LACMA Shuts Down Film Program
The cash crunch is hitting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which has quietly been letting go of many of its curators. It is now canceling its weekend film program, reports the LA Times. Head programmer Ian Birnie will be shifted to part-time consultant status. LACMA said the program lost $1 million over the last ten years and had failed to build an audience. Sorry, I thought the room was usually packed when I attended. I loved the programming, but it was arcane and eclectic, as a museum's should be, not designed to "build an audience."
For four decades, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has fed film aficionados a steady diet of movie masterpieces -- retrospectives that included works from Roman Polanski, Cary Grant, Ernst Lubitsch and, in a current series, James Mason. But after the museum's weekend film program lost $1 million over the last 10 years and failed to build an audience, LACMA said Tuesday that it was pulling the plug on its cinematic centerpiece.
Before there were local film festivals nearly every week, and mass merchants such as Target stocked art-house hits like "A Room With a View" and "Gosford Park" on their DVD shelves, LACMA's film series was one of the few places area movie lovers could find Hollywood classics and foreign-language standouts.
The museum said that it was not abandoning its commitment to films and filmmakers but wanted to rethink its approach to the art form and would look for potential donors to underwrite an unspecified future film program that is curated like any other part of the museum's exhibits.
BTW, the scrappy survivor in the LA exhibition scene is the American Cinematheque, led by executive director Barbara Smith, recent recipient of a French knighthood. She knows how to woo film fans to two very different locations, Hollywood's Egyptian and Santa Monica's Aero. They work hard to market and get the word out to their fanbase. So does UCLA's Film & Television Archive, now relocated at the Billy Wilder Theatre at the Hammer Museum in Westwood.
UPDATE: Statement from LACMA on the jump.
Dear Friends of the Film department,
Please find below a statement from Michael Govan, LACMA's CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, in regards to Film's restructuring:
As of this fall, LACMA will be changing its overall approach to film programming, ending itsweekend film program by November in order to reconsider the nature, scale, and scope of our film programs. My hope is to engage in a full discussion among the staff and the Board about developing and increasing our commitment to film as central to our curatorial programming.
As part of that, and for the present, we will certainly place greater emphasis on artist-created films reflecting the museum's growing relationship with contemporary artists and the contemporary art world. We will also continue to plan art exhibition-oriented festivals that will be presented in the context of the museum's overall curatorial program. These films will be presented in the Bing Theater occasionally throughout the year. Additionally, the museum will continue its weekly Tuesday matinee program, which presents Hollywood film classics at a discounted price for seniors.
As a result of this programmatic change and the reduction of program hours, Ian Birnie's responsibilities at LACMA have been restructured: he will become a consulting curator, charged with advancing LACMA's ongoing discussion about the type of film program the museum should envision in the future. He will also be pursuing other professional opportunities. Ian has done a marvelous job on ever-smaller budgets to produce respected film programs for LACMA.
Curators from Contemporary Art, Modern Art, and Photography will take an expanded role in many of the upcoming programming decisions, and in the selection of artist-created films. And we will continue exhibition-related film programs across disciplines and presented in conjunction with LACMA's special exhibition offerings.
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. My hope is to reemerge with a major commitment to film that helps define LACMA's curatorial mission.
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