Three of LA MOCA’s Artist Trustees Return to Board

After a tumultuous couple of years that nearly saw the museum lose its independence, things at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) seem to be stabilizing under the guiding hand of new director Philippe Vergne. Five members of the institution’s board of trustees who resigned in protest during the troubled Jeffrey Deitch era have been reelected, including artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, and Catherine Opie.

In 2012, protesting Deitch’s institution of a “celebrity-driven program” and the ouster of longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel, all four of the museum’s artist trustees resigned, as well as board members Kathi Cypres, Steven F. Roth, and Jane Nathanson. Like Opie, Kruger, and Baldessari, Cypres and Roth have also reentered the fold. Ed Ruscha, formerly the fourth artist board member, now serves in a similar capacity at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and has been succeeded on the MOCA board by LA-based painter Mark Grotjahn.