By John Seed
johnseed@gmail.com

Posted: December 1, 2009

Written contents copyright 2009 by John Seed
Please do not copy or excerpt without the author's permission

My MOCA nametag

In September of 1983 I was hired as a member of the installation crew of the not yet opened Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles. Established in 1979, MOCA had been trying for some time to open an exhibition space, and its founding director/curator, Pontus Hultén, had recently resigned. Hultén’s Volvo, crushed into a cube by the French artist Arman, remained in the museum’s Boyd Street offices, and some of his exhibition plans and expansive vision lingered as well. Richard Koshalek, an idea man lured from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, had taken over as Museum Director and things were hopping.

 For a dollar a year, the city of Los Angeles had agreed to rent MOCA the building that would be called the “Temporary Contemporary,” a 40,000 square foot industrial building in Little Tokyo. Originally a hardware warehouse, and later an auto body shop, the building was rapidly being cleaned up and sparingly renovated according to plans provided by architect Frank Gehry.

The idea was that MOCA would be open well before the summer 1984 Olympic Games, ready to demonstrate the cultural vitality of Los Angeles to legions of visitors.  A permanent building, designed by Arata Isozaki would follow in a few years.  There was a building boom going on downtown throughout the 80’s and MOCA was a key element in a surge that was intended to make downtown sparkle.

My first day on the job, Lorraine Gordon, Hultén’s former office manager, took a quick Polaroid photo of me, laminated it into a MOCA security badge, and sent me right to work.  For a young painter like me, working at the TC – as we called it -- was going to be a phenomenal opportunity to become exposed to myriad works of art, as well as an opportunity to meet artists, collectors, curators and their hangers-on. What I didn’t anticipate was that my exposure to downtown Los Angeles would leave an equally another set of impressions, many of them disturbing and frightening.  MOCA opened up a vivid world to me, but Skid Row, where I would soon rent a loft/studio, was even more eye-opening.

The installation crew, half a dozen or so artists and hands-on types led by the unflappable John Bowsher, was preparing to install “The First Show,” a gigantic exhibition featuring major works of modern and contemporary art borrowed from eight private collections.  From the moment I arrived until the “First Show” opened in November, the TC was a beehive of activity.  Crated art was arriving from all over the world, including giant canvasses from the Saatchi collection in London that had been inserted into special leaning crates that barely fit into a Boeing 747 cargo jet. 

My first glimpse of the museum’s director, Richard Koshalek, came when he ordered that a freestanding display wall intended for a hulking Julian Schnabel painting wall be instantly demolished and then re-erected a few yards away. Koshalek, I would learn, had Pharoahic self-confidence. He was a great guy, but he tended to wear out the people who worked for him. He liked to state that MOCA, with a staff of around 40 people, was mounting exhibitions that were comparable to those of the Whitney in New York which had a staff of over 100. If the museum's top administrator, Sherri Geldin, hadn't been there to provide reality checks, who knows what he would have asked us to do.

The Temporary Contemporary, was a soaring, flexible space, and it wasn’t the last time that I saw walls fall and rise in a matter of days or even hours. My memory of period is a blur, but I remember the fatigue of working long hours interspersed with the excitement of uncrating and installing great works of art. Seeing the vivid lunar blue of Yve Klein’s sponge and pebble “Requiem” as it was uncrated was so moving to me that when the “First Show” was over I took the exhibition label home as a relic and pinned it to my wall.  

Installing a Giacometti painting

By the time the “First Show” had opened I had given MOCA my own nickname: “The Museum of Coffee Achievers.” Like myself, most MOCA staff members were young, few had children, and we all understood that the price of working at such a great place was that total dedication was required. It made sense to me that I should try to find a place to live near the museum, and I had the romantic idea – very much in line with the vision of MOCA’s founders – that downtown Los Angeles was going to be the next SoHo. I would be like a New York artist, living in a loft, inbibing culture, and waiting for gentrification to hit.