Crime in the Museums by Heather Mac Donald - City Journal
The Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles has just opened what it bills as America’s first major museum survey of graffiti. Such an occasion naturally raises two pressing questions: would MOCA demonstrate the slightest twinge of conscience toward the criminal nature of its subject matter? And would viewers be allowed to “tag”—that is, commit graffiti of their own—inside the exhibit?
The answer to these questions is most emphatically: No! And No!
This double negative might seem puzzling. Given MOCA’s utter indifference to the destruction of other people’s property, why should it care whether someone writes on its own walls? The contradiction, however, is emblematic of this shallow, abominably irresponsible show.Art in the Streets is the inaugural exhibit of MOCA’s new director, Jeffrey Deitch, a gallery director from New York City. With it, Deitch hopes to stamp himself on L.A.’s art scene as a fearless exponent of edgy, anarchist art, just as his gallery installations and anti-establishment performance pieces sealed his reputation in New York.Art in the Streets assiduously ignores the moral and civic issues raised by any glorification of graffiti. Ironically, it doesn’t even make up for the intellectual and ethical vacuum at the heart of this travesty of a show with compensating visual fireworks.
Drive behind the Geffen Contemporary, an art museum in downtown Los Angeles, and you will notice that it has painted over the graffiti scrawled on its back wall. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be surprising; the Geffen’s neighbors also maintain constant vigilance against graffiti vandalism. But beginning in April, the Geffen—a satellite of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art—will host what MOCA proudly bills as America’s first major museum survey of “street art,” a euphemism for graffiti. Graffiti, it turns out, is something that MOCA celebrates only on other people’s property, not on its own....
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