The Rothkos of the Panza Collection, installed at the Temporary Contemporary, Spring 1985

Photo by Squidds and Nunn, MOCA Archive

As my living situation became more conventional, MOCA was also edging in a more conservative direction. In early 1985 the museum exhibited a group of works, purchased for 11 million dollars from the collection of Count Panza di Biumo. I remember at the time wondering why modern works by New York artists belonged at MOCA when there were living California artists well worth collecting. In my mind, the Panza collection featured works that would have fit in better at another museum devoted to modern art. That said, once the Panza show was hung my reservations faded. Before work I would sip coffee in front of the magnificent room of Rothko paintings that were the centerpiece of the Panza collection. The emptiness of Rothko was another escape from the wilderness of downtown life.

The dining room at my new loft, with an Eric Orr painting and a table by Michael Tolleson

Inside, my apartment at 37th at Main showed the influence of working at MOCA. All the walls were gallery white, and in my dining room hung an emerald green Eric Orr painting: a kind of cousin to the blue Rothkos I admired at work. When I walked Turrell there were no more broken Night Train bottles in the gutter, and the panhandlers had almost entirely vanished. That’s not to say that I didn’t still come across drunks.

My place wasn’t too far from the USC Campus, and one early morning while walking my dog Turrell I saw a bus pull up in front of Sorority Row. As the passengers spilled out, I saw that they were young men in tuxedos and girls in formal dresses, just back from an event that must have gone all night. One girl tripped on the curb leaving the bus and began to vomit. Then, in a kind of chain reaction half a dozen of the young, beautiful USC students began to vomit onto the manicured lawn of he sorority house. If you were to ask me what I remember about the Reagan years, I would tell you that there was heavy drinking on Skid Row and Sorority Row. Of course, I would also tell you that it was a very exciting period in the art world.

Managing the Temporary Contemporary bookstore was an education. One interesting person after another would lean on the counter and chat about art with me and the bookstore clerks. Count Panza, a gracious soft-spoken man explained to me that site specific works had a natural appeal to an Italian, as he had grown up contemplating frescoes embedded in the walls of buildings. Francesco Clemente came in and signed my copy of the "First Show" catalog, and before someone walked away with it one day, the book had been signed by over 15 of the artist's whose works had been in the show. David Hockney, wearing mis-matched socks bought a book on late Picasso which he was very pleased to find in our inventory. Speaking of Picasso, his daughter Paloma toured the TC with her husband one day, and I found her to be exquisitely, exotically beautiful.

One day a sharp-featured older woman dragged in an elderly gentleman and practically grabbed me. "This is Rufino Tamayo, the Mexican master," she told me, "and he must have a retrospective here!" I explained that I was only the bookstore manager, but that didn't slow her down. Tamayo looked at me and winked: he didn't mind being her toy poodle, and was used to her speeches.

Wonderful small exhibitions complemented the major ones, and durng the summer of 1985 I found Bill Viola's "Theatre of Memory" mesmerizing. John Bowsher's crew managed to drag a thirty foot tall, uprooted magnolia tree into one of the rooms in the upstairs display area, where it was hung with lanterns and hundreds of silver wind chimes. A fan activated the chimes while a large video projection crackled, and bristled with fragmentary images. It blew my mind. Why, I wondered, did the museum need a fancy new building on Grand Avenue, when the TC could facilitate installations like this one?

L to R: Richard Koshalek, Senior Curator Julia Brown and James Turrell during the Installation of "Occluded Front"

During my final months working at MOCA, the TC was the site of a memorable show and installation by James Turrell, an artist who works with light, space and perception. I was in awe of Turrell's work, and felt that his show was exactly the kind of show that could only be presented in a place like the Temporary Contemporary. Exhibitions like Turrell's were one reason why working at MOCA was just wonderful. Another reason was the supportive atmosphere: when Richard Koshalek came in to a staff meeting one morning, and read part of an LA Times review praising one of my paintings, it made my week.

The museum’s new Grand Avenue building was nearly completed, but I felt ambivalent about the possibility of working there: I had bonded with the “Temporary.” Add to that, Stuart Buchalter, a trustee who was helping with the development of the new bookstore, was an expert in cost control. He decided that a whopping $17,500 would be the perfect annual salary for the Grand Avenue bookstore manager, and I choked on that figure. Despite all the benefits of working at MOCA, it was time for me to move on.

I gave my notice in December, and by January of 1986 I had my first part-time teaching job. By the Fall of 1986, I had a full-time teaching job at Mt. San Jacinto College where I still teach today.

Downtown Los Angeles, seen from the Getty

Recently I stood at the edge of another Los Angeles museum, the Getty Center in Brentwood. The Getty, which opened in 1997, is a serene place that offers expansive views, both of the nearby sky-line of Westwood, and also of downtown, further towards the horizon. Looking south, I thought to myself: “This is how I like to experience downtown now: from a distance."

 In the years since leaving MOCA I have gone back enough times to enjoy the splendid but fastidious Isozaki MOCA on Grand Avenue, and also to stare at its neighbor, Disney Hall. I will always prefer the "TC,"now the Geffen Contemporary, as I think it is a space that is more about art than it is about architecture. I haven't been back to the "Birdhouse"-- although I did get a glimpse of it when I watched the movie "Devil in a Blue Dress -- but it wouldn't suprise me a bit to find that is now filled with expensive condos. Maybe some of the areas that were full of trouble when I lived downtown are cleaned up now. Of course, when you "clean up" an area, the people have to go somewhere, right? You can re-develop Skid Row, but the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to be producing a new generation of young people with maimed bodies and minds. If one Skid Row has been improved, impoverished, damaged people will create another one if society doesn't offer them anything better.

We certainly need art museums, and I owe a personal debt of thanks to the visionaries who established, funded, and opened MOCA. It was a very original museum with an idealistic, ambitious set of values, and it still is. I am very pleased that Eli Broad and others stepped up when the museum experienced a recent financial crisis.

That said, whenever I think of MOCA I think of the problems I saw when I lived downtown. I admire MOCA as an institution, but I think I admire the Union Rescue Mission even more.