Los Angeles - Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA)

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles was founded in 1979 as "a private museum with a public conscience", but the main building on Bunker Hill, designed by the Japanese Arata Osozaki, which was expected to be opened in time for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984, was in fact not ready for occupation until December 1986.

In the meantime the administrators used a storeroom provided by the city, which was very skillfully converted into a number of galleries by the well-known architect Frank Gehry.

Temporary Contemporary

It became known as the Temporary Contemporary (152 North Central Avenue) and was so well received that it has continued in use as a kind of permanent branch of the main museum. General

Until this museum was founded Los Angeles was without a collective home for art which is exclusively contemporary, not just modern. The main building was erected on the last piece of vacant land on the California Plaza, a giant complex of offices and apartment buildings, shopping centers and restaurants, between the City Hall and the actual city center. Pontus Hulten, former manager of the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, was chosen as the first director of the museum, but he withdrew from the post before the two buildings were inaugurated, and his deputy Richard Koshalek was appointed in his place.

The museum was set up so that there would be a home in Los Angeles for contemporary art, and the many native collectors could be catered for. It is hoped that one day it will acquire what is probably the most important private collection of contemporary art, that of the industrialist Frederic R. Weisman, before - as already mentioned - he builds his own museum.

Stock of exhibits

In the meantime two important collections have been donated to the museum: 80 works that were in the possession of the Italian Count Guiseppe Panza di Biumo (mainly of abstract impressionism and pop-art), as well as 64 from the estate of the collector Barry Lowen (minimalists from the sixties and seventies, neo-expressionists, post-minimalists from the eighties).

Together with gifts of individual works, the museum has a stock of 425 paintings, sculptures, prints, sketches, photos, installations and other works, and it is still in the building-up phase.

Lighting conditions

The natural lighting conditions of the Isozakis Museum, built of red sandstone, are extremely advantageous, thanks to its pyramidal superstructures, cubes and cylinders which give the low building the appearance of being at the same time higher and yet firmly anchored to the ground. The division of the old storeroom into small and large galleries, with ramps and staircases, provides many possible arrangements for exhibitions.

It is not possible to give details about the exhibition rooms, because the relatively meager stocks are constantly being changed, and also because many temporary exhibitions are held. During a visit to the two museums it was found that there were nine exhibitions being held at the same time - five in the new museum (including a large-scale one by the German painter Anselm Kiefer) and four in Temporary Contemporary.