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Michael Govan
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Interview with Michael Govan
ON KEEPING ART
FRONT AND CENTER
Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, spoke in 2006 with the magazine At Lacma about his favorites from the collection he oversees, about the gathering “critical mass” of Los Angeles culture, and about the museum’s imperative to “keep art front and center.” An abridged version of this interview appeared in the May/June 2006 issue of At Lacma.
Q: We’re so pleased to welcome you to LACMA and Los Angeles. Besides your new position with the museum, what is it about the city itself that interests you?
A: There is something fantastic about the openness of the county of Los Angeles. It’s too big and too complicated to ever be entirely gentrified or ever be entirely tamed, and I have to say I am very drawn to that complexity. People have spoken about it in pessimistic and optimistic terms, but it is what it is, and there’s certainly no place in the world like it. And one of the things I’m looking forward to is indulging in that entirely new and interesting environment.
Q: Besides indulging, what are some of your immediate goals?
A: What’s most important for me at this stage is to learn. I would put it at the highest level. That’s very much true about the collection, the artwork, and from the curators. Then there’s also obviously a huge, ongoing construction project that I will be involved in. And this project is the cornerstone of a long-term redevelopment effort to not only improve the visitor experience, but to allow better access, connecting the campus, improving the galleries and the presentation of the collection and exhibitions.
Q: Speaking of the city in which we reside, what role do you think LACMA plays in defining it?
A: Well, I think to put the museum in the broadest context of L.A, you have to step back as far as possible. What’s interesting about Los Angeles is that you can literally feel the energy of time taking its course. Major cultural and art institutions are beginning to develop—MOCA and Disney—and then you see this surge of energy at LACMA and can almost feel this critical mass building. And it’s fair to say, given the number of people who live in Los Angeles county and its size and economic importance, that the arts institutions aren’t quite yet at the level of size and economic power of the city. There is room to grow, and I think that is the exciting opportunity. This is a time when it is clear that people are committed to that growth.
Q: Growth is certainly something the museum is in the midst of. What are your thoughts about our transformation?
A: I think the important thing is to keep art front and center. One of the nice things about Renzo Piano designs, in general, is that he’s always had in his buildings—buildings that I know very well, like the Menil Collection or the Twombly Gallery, which was essentially a partnership with Dia before my time—is that there is a certain subtlety to his work, where the building is designed to bring in proper light and to accommodate artworks along with the public the museum serves. His designs function very well and beautifully and there is certainly an art to that. He is among the best architects.
Q: Museum architects and the spaces they create are certainly becoming an important part of the larger discussion about art.
A: There’s a lot of discussion about architecture being a necessary element to drawing people to a site. You can see why that’s true in certain cases, like Disney Hall. The activity that goes on there is music and so the incredibly beautiful visual spectacle of the architecture is a perfect complement to that. In the museum of art, the visual spectacle, if you will, is the art, and I am a strong believer that you have to design museums from the inside out. For instance, the building I just built for Dia in Beacon, New York is all about accommodating a collection and specific artists and artworks within an old building and renovating the building to suit the art. But I want to stress that I think you can have both of these criteria met. When you have a general museum like LACMA you’ll have some spaces where you have a sense of the permanent collection and some sense of a changing space. The important thing is to keep art front and center.
Q: On that note, let’s do keep art front and center—any particular pieces from our permanent collection that stand out?
A: There are works I remember so well from when I studied painting in college: the Guido Reni and the Georges de La Tour. And I have always seen the Pre-Columbian collection as a whole, as a sort of magical thing. The Assyrian reliefs, like those at the Met, have made an impression, too. There are also very beautiful contemporary and modern things that tap into my own personal relationship with art, like the early Robert Irwin line painting or the painting by Agnes Martin.
Q: In an interview with the Los Angeles Times you called LACMA a sleeping giant. What did you mean by that?
A: Well, I think that fits in with what we discussed earlier. In the context of this amazing city that is seeing all this energy, LACMA is already an enormous resource, especially if you look carefully at the depth of the collection, and in many areas of specialization, like the major European paintings, the Pre-Columbian and Asian collections. There’s an amazing amount of material there and I think with some improved gallery space—more space—and the strong attention the trustees have right now to build upon it, there’s probably going to be this critical mass that’s achieved in terms of the recognition of the strength of the collection. Not to mention the new initiatives in Korean art and contemporary art, with the resources The Broad Foundation is bringing to the museum. The idea of the sleeping giant is that LACMA is actually already there, and by adding a few more things, our scale and our resources will be very evident to the public.
Q: In the same interview you talked about a desire to build closer ties to young local artists. Why is that important to you, and to the museum?
This is another part of critical mass. If you look at history and you look at the development of mainly urban environments where art has flourished, you can see they tend to begin in the presence of artists—artists tend to be an amazing barometer of the creative and cultural energy of a city. You see, the explosion in Paris of a large population of working artists who are very relevant to art history in the early part of the century comes with museum building and cultural growth. If you look at New York in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, it’s the same—artists are in advance of a city’s cultural explosion. What you see right now is that L.A. is now home to nearly the largest population of working artists that have created energy in that sense, and so it makes sense to take advantage of that because it is a huge resource on many levels. And it’s also a huge audience. Consider the film industry. We tend to see the film industry, especially from New York, as a few stars and directors. But honestly there are thousands of lighting and technical people and artists in that industry who love museums and get a tremendous amount of inspiration from art. So it’s not just that you bring in the artwork of artists in Los Angeles—who are among the most creative and interesting working in the world today—but that you reach out to that community of artists as an audience because they rely so much on the history of art for inspiration for the future of art.
Q: Is there anything our members can do to help facilitate some of your ideas and goals we’ve been talking about?
A: Absolutely. You have eighty-five thousand members, and they are LACMA’s ambassadors to a county of ten million. A work of art is nothing without an audience. If we could ask our members to introduce each of their friends to the museum—tell them what’s going on here, follow our growth and construction, and interest others—then we can continue to grow awareness. In a place that’s so spread out, it’s incumbent on those people who appreciate LACMA to introduce others to it. We’ve got a pretty great group of people to do that.
Q: And now for a more personal question . . . what is it about New York that you’re going to miss most?
A: Well, I do love the city of New York. It’s an amazing place, and I have many friends there. It has an incredible density and energy that is hard to ignore. Then again, there’s snow right now outside my window and I slipped on the ice getting out of the taxi, so I won’t miss that! But one of the things I will miss is the incredible diversity—economically, ethnically. You sense that Los Angeles has that same diversity, but it’s not in such close proximity. And I actually think that’s one function for the museum—that it has much to identify with, from all corners. The museum itself represents diversity and different cultures. It would be interesting to me to see if we could create some of that density and diversity at LACMA.
Q: And what is it about Los Angeles that you’re looking forward to?
A: Well, the flying weather doesn’t hurt, since flying small planes is my hobby. And the fact that there are so many amazing natural, cultural, ancient resources in the western states, which is part of why I’m so interested in Los Angeles and the museum. LACMA’s not just the museum for Los Angeles, and not just the largest museum in California, but actually it’s the museum of note in the entire western United States. It plays multiple roles—it’s the large, metropolitan, single repository for cultural artifacts and an educational center for visual culture in the entire western United States; that’s a big responsibility. And there’s so much culture out here. In fact, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in Mexico working on art projects—in some cases with artists and in some cases visiting certain sites in Mexico. Obviously there’s a tremendous visual history there, which is why I’m so interested in next year’s exhibition, Arts in Latin America—it brings together some of my personal interests and newfound love of Mexico as I begin to see more of it.
This interview was conducted by At Lacma Editor Brooke Fruchtman.
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