Thank you again, Los Angeles Times Culture Monsters:

Several museums and art institutions, including the Orange County Museum of Art, are saying that the Judith Rothschild Foundation has failed to make good on 17 grants awarded for 2009.

The total amount of money in question reportedly amounts to more than $100,000. Some of the arts organizations have filed a formal complaint to the New York attorney general’s office.

A spokeswoman for OCMA said today that it has received a letter from the foundation stating that the grant money will be paid. The museum added that its grant from the foundation was for $4,000 and is intended to go toward costs associated with the works of Florence Miller Pierce in an exhibition titled “Illumination”…..

Read the rest online at LA times Culture Monsters

The report from ArtDaily.org

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Following a worldwide search, the Board of Trustees of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced today it has voted unanimously to appoint Jeffrey Deitch as the museum’s new director, effective June 1. Deitch [DIEtsch], 57, is one of New York’s leading gallerists, specializing in modern and contemporary art, and he has a 30-year career as an independent curator who has produced innovative exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world. As an art advisor to some of the world’s leading institutional and private collectors, he has helped build a number of major international contemporary art collections……

Read the complete original:
MOCA Board of Trustees Names New York Gallerist Jeffrey Deitch as Museum Director

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I just found this blog, which asks this interesting question by way of introducing an upcoming conference on the “future of museums” on December 9 in Los Angeles:

When we talk about the CFM forecasting report Museums & Society 2034, this figure always makes museum folk sit up and take notice.

Changing composition of America (U.S. Census Bureau/Reach Advisors)

It dramatizes the growing disconnect between the population of the U.S., which is becoming increasingly diverse culturally and ethnically, and the core audience of museums, which continues to be mostly Caucasian. In only a few decades, our society will be “majority minority.” California, Texas, Hawaii ,New Mexico and the District of Columbia have already achieved this status. What does this presage for museums? Can we continue to go about our business, hoping that new audiences will come to know and love us? Do we need to change the way we think, talk, hire and plan in order to establish our relevant to diverse audiences? Or are we evolving towards a post-racial America in which the major challenge will be reaching the tech-savvy, highly engaged “myCulture” generation, whatever their ethnic and cultural heritage?

Read more about the conference and check out author Elizabeth Merritt’s good work at Center for the Future of Museums

A new entry from the ever-thoughtful Museum 2.0 blog:

Over the past year, I’ve noticed a strange trend in the calls I receive about upcoming participatory museum projects: the majority of them are being planned for teen audiences. A large number of the collaborative projects of which I’m aware (in which staff partner with community members to co-develop exhibits or programs) are initiated with teens. Even the most traditional museums often manage educational programs in which teens develop their own exhibits, produce youth-focused museum events, or provide educational experiences for younger visitors. And while I enjoy working with youth and consuming their creations as a museum visitor, I’d like to call into question the idea that they are or should be the primary audience for participatory experiences. Why are teens over-represented in participatory projects? I see four main reasons…

Read the rest here:
Why Are So Many Participatory Experiences Focused on Teens?

We just received this invitation from The Art of Photography founder Steven Churchill through Facebook, check it out:

The Art of Photography Show welcomes professional photographer and author Judith Fox. She will be giving a sneak preview and A/V presentation about her new book, “I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s”, a poignant and beautiful portrait of a man with Alzheimer’s as seen through the loving lens and words of his wife and care-partner. Early VIP release of the book will be available tonight!!

If you’re not on Facebook yet, you may be missing one of the fastest growing channels that artists, galleries and museums are using to communicate with their core audiences today, not just in San Diego, but all around the world. In addition to The Art of Photography show and Steve Churchill, on Facebook you’ll also find the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Ray at Night founder Gustaf Rooth and Art Now San Diego publisher John Hiemstra to name a few, along with over 200 million other people. Its a great place to show your support for the arts anywhere and everywhere.

NEW YORK, NY.- Through October 23rd, Acquavella Galleries is exhibiting Grands Formats (Large Scale) works by renowned twentieth-century Canadian artist, Jean Paul Riopelle (1923 – 2002). The current exhibition presents a selection of Riopelle’s large-scale paintings from the early 1950s through the 1970s in addition to four monumental works on paper from the 1960s. While many of the works have been shown in important exhibitions, such as the 1981 Riopelle retrospective that travelled from the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris to major museums throughout Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela….

Jean Paul Riopelle

Read the original article here:
Acquavella Galleries Shows Large Scale Works by Jean Paul Riopelle

Another thoughtful post from the Museum 2.0 blog.

I spent last week on vacation in the High Sierras rock climbing. Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk’s new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience . In it, John provides a model for the museum visitor experience based on one fundamental idea: people visit and make meaning from museum experiences based on their ability to fulfill identity-related goals and interests.

In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things. If you are someone seeking spiritual refreshment, you will go to museums to relax and recharge. Different people in the same museum on the same day can have very different experiences–and memories of their experiences–based on the personal context in which they enter.

John details five identity needs that are well-served by museums: explorer, experience seeker, recharger, professional/hobbyist, and facilitator….

Go here to see the original:
What’s Your Leisure Identity? Does it Bring You Into Museums?

Another thoughtful and comprehensive post form the Museum 2.0 blog:

I’m working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs.

While doing research, I found myself digging back into old arguments on museum listservs about photo policies and I want to add my two (very opinionated) cents on this. While the majority of experience-based museums like children’s and science museums have unrestricted noncommercial photography policies, many collections-based art and history museums continue to maintain highly restrictive photo policies.

As I understand it, there are five main arguments for restrictive policies:

• Intellectual Property: Museums must respect diverse intellectual property agreements with donors and lenders, and in institutions where some objects are photographable and others not, it’s often easier to use the most restrictive agreements as the basis for institutional policies.
• Conservation: Objects may be damaged by flash photography. Some conservators argue that if non-flash photography is permitted, light levels in the galleries may be increased to accommodate visitors’ cameras, which indirectly damage artifacts.
• Revenue Streams: Museums want to maintain control of sales of “officially sanctioned” images of objects via catalogues and postcards. If people can take their own photos, they won’t buy them in the gift shop….

Read the complete post here:
Museum Photo Policies Should Be as Open as Possible

Since I’m in San Francisco this weekend, I thought I’d pass on this selection from regular favorite ArtDaily about the next show to open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- From September 12 through December 20, 2009, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will present two exhibitions organized by Lisa Sutcliffe, SFMOMA’s assistant curator of photography: The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography and Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea. The exhibitions feature pictures from SFMOMA’s extensive collection of postwar Japanese photography, one of the most highly regarded in the country, and from the museum’s growing collection of contemporary photographs from China, Japan, and Korea. The Provoke Era: Postwar Japanese Photography, the museums’ first survey of postwar Japanese pictures, will include nearly a hundred works from the 1960s through the 1990s, as well as a number of rare books and magazines.

Watanabe, SFMOMA, ArtDaily.org

Visit link:
SFMOMA Features Two Exhibitions of Extraordinary Asian Photography

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Follow this link:
Redevelopment Agency Awards the Mexican Museum $250000 in Grant …