Almost exactly a year ago, I caught up with Jori Finkel, a journalist who covers the Los Angeles arts scene, and we talked about an art-world controversy that she first wrote about in The New York Times. The controversy focused on museums seeking funding from art galleries, which can be a direct conflict of interests, and her lead example was L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Well, it turns out now that MOCA is in serious financial trouble, with its annual operating costs running up to $20 million and its endowment plunging below $10 million. It also turns out that last year’s scandal should have sent up some red flags. So we decided to do a follow-up interview with Jori and get her take on MOCA’s fiscal crisis and bailout plans.

DC: We’ve seen a lot of banks and financial institutions looking for bailouts, and the more we investigate them, the more we realize these institutions were simply acting recklessly. When the history of this crisis gets written, I imagine that we’ll realize that it wasn’t just the banks that mismanaged their funds and got caught on a limb. Is that what we’re seeing here with MOCA?

JF: I’m not aware of any crazy executive bonuses or expensive company retreats if that’s what you mean. No, what we’re looking at here are two rather classic nonprofit management problems: under-funding and overspending. L.A. Times critic Christopher Knight took MOCA trustees to task for not coughing up enough cash, and I’ve also written a lot about the crisis in cultural philanthropy in L.A. The biggest problem is that Hollywood types would rather give money to a cause, environmental or political, than to the arts.

But it’s naïve just to say the museum is under-funded. They were clearly overspending. Their staff ballooned to 200 while their endowment was shrinking, and museum ambitions clearly outstripped their actual, legitimate sources of funding. In most businesses, that would be reason to rethink, retrench, downsize. That apparently hasn’t happened on a large enough scale here. They seem to have put artistic ideals ahead of financial realities–putting what the museum should exhibit ahead of what it can afford to exhibit.

DC: During our interview last year, you raised some doubts about how MOCA was funding its major Murakami show. In retrospect, was that an early sign that things were going wrong at the museum? Were there other red flags?

JF: Yes, I think the fact that MOCA was hustling money for its Murakami show from commercial dealers who represent the artist was a sign of financial trouble and maybe even desperation. It looks in retrospect like a bright red flag. You raised the perfect question last year: Why was MOCA engaging in this practice when so many other museum leaders spoke out against it as unethical?

Another early warning sign came when the museum started closing down the Geffen Contemporary for a few months at a time. Some reporters are treating this fact like it’s new. It’s not. There was even a time three or four years ago when the MOCA web site carried a notice to film scouts—essentially saying the Geffen is yours for the right price. Can you imagine the Museum of Modern Art in New York doing this?

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