The much-anticipated Jeff Koons retrospective isn’t coming to MoCA as planned for this coming January. Instead, the retrospective will debut at the Whitney in New York in June 2014, then travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris in October 2014. It’s not entirely cancelled — a MOCA rep tried to quell the ripple of confusion and balloon jokes by clarifying that the retrospective will be making its way to the MOCA at some point in 2015, allegedly.
In related art oligarch news, Damien Hirst’s upcoming major exhibition at the Tate Modern in London was supposed to travel to the MOCA as well, but now said travel plans are “on indefinite hold because the show is so expensive.” The Economist reports:
The price of crating, shipping, installing and insuring Mr Hirst’s works exceeds MoCA’s entire annual exhibition budget of $3m—a sum donated by Eli Broad, a philanthropist. He has lent two works from his substantial collection of Hirsts to the Tate.
Meanwhile, MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch is leaving Los Angeles and heading back to New York, eventually. With the Museum of Contemporary Art’s two sure blockbusters “delayed,” oh well, whatever.
The current programming seems fine, with recent screenings of the Brooklyn/world-based Aboveground Animation collective’s new work, the upcoming RETNA site-specific installation, and the Urs Fischer exhibit, currently on view at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA and featuring Fischer’s lit and melting wax sculpture copy of Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women. It’s melting… melting… melting… it’s gone (on August 19th).
(Image: Forbes)
