Note to the art world: it's a business

Marketing genius Denny Hatch has a solution for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, which is now in very deep financial doo-doo. His solution is freakin’ brilliant: stop being sanctimonious, treat your museum like a business, and do whatcha gotta do, no matter how “distasteful.” Denny shares his ideas this morning in his Common Sense web-letter. Take a look:

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles is broke, and a lot of folks are in high dudgeon.

Its profligate and irresponsible director, Jeremy Strick, classically trained and hired in 1999 out of the Art Institute of Chicago, has burned through $44 million of the museum’s endowment, leaving it with a paltry $6 million.

This is a major scandal.

Museum management is dithering over how to quickly raise the $25 million needed to keep the doors open and some of its programs going. Do they merge with another museum? Do they hit up some big donors? Do they hire Carl Bloom Associates to launch a direct mail campaign?

Uh-uh. No time.

The sentence that follows this one will be the most blasphemous concept that could ever be promulgated in the eyes of the ego-driven elitists who run art museums.

To get on its feet, MOCA needs only to sell two paintings from its permanent collection; fire the director; put some responsible, competent people on its board; suck it up and start over.

Sell two paintings out of its permanent collection?

AAAaaaaaahhhhhhheeeeeeee!!!!

Read the whole article here.