Long Beach’s Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), after taking a severely deep cut of $600,000 from its former $4 million budget, had to face yet another tough chop when the museum was forced to remove the position of chief curator from its slate of operations, causing the departure of Cecilia Fajardo-Hill. The museum will, however, continue to operate normally with a curator and an assistant curator still on staff.
Budget woes stem from the loss of MOLAA’s main beneficiary, Robert Gumbiner, who passed away in 2009, leaving the museum to fend for itself whenever shortfalls come. This includes staff and administration changes, such as the switch of the museum’s president and CEO just over a year ago from former overseer Richard Townsend to current president Stuart Ashman.
Well-respected internationally, there was no question that Fajardo-Hill’s departure had nothing to do with her competence or performance as a curator.
“Cecilia does amazing exhibitions,” said MOLAA spokesperson Susan Golden. “Quite frankly, with all of the cuts that have to happen, she would’ve been curtailed in what she could have done.”
Undoubtedly, Fajardo-Hill was one of the museum’s most bold and ambitious curators, dedicated staunchly to the fact that museums represent academic thought while grasping firmly to MOLAA’s contemporary slant.
Hailing from the lauded Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in Miami, Fajardo-Hill’s first exhibition used her own powers to the museum’s strengths, garnering a collection of abstract pieces from CIFO’s hailed collection. Los Angeles Times art critic Kristopher Knight called the show the most compelling in MOLAA’s (at the time) 13-year history.
Her 2013 abstraction exhibition along with her 2014 proposal—a ground-breaking exhibition of an array of contemporary Latin-American women artists—were in and of themselves expensive; the latter in particular since its industrious scope would have most likely led it to visit institutions internationally.
Interestingly enough, despite rave reviews and respect in both the critical and academic worlds of art (Golden described them as “beautiful shows, beautifully installed”), her exhibitions were strangely unattended compared to some of the more simple, straight-forward exhibitions—ultimately leading to the question of what the museum’s role to the public is.
And like many other major museums—the Getty, LACMA, and, most recently, MOCA—MOLAA must reexamine itself. It is, after all, not a CIFO or a Broad Foundation, organizations which, while they open their doors to the public, ultimately have no interest in popular approval. Rather, these organizations strictly and entirely gear themselves towards artistic integrity. And MOLAA, as Golden pointed out, cannot play on that field since it is, first and foremost, a public entity.
“We’re not the Hammer, we’re not the Broad,” explained Golden. “We can’t just say, ‘Oh well,’ when the public doesn’t respond to our exhibitions—a luxury these other institutions have. Not to mention we’re 16-years-old… A baby compared to some of these other institutions like LACMA or the Getty.”
{loadposition latestnews}Following a grant from the Irvine Foundation to do marketing research, MOLAA discovered an intriguing bit of fact: regardless of what curators like, regardless of what is “important,” the public has a desire to see a certain type of art at MOLAA—and that certain type of art happens to be figurative and colorful.
“While as an institution, we don’t want to be promoting erroneous stereotypes about Latin-America and Latin-American Art,” said Golden, “the fact of the matter is that one has to pay attention to what the public wants. Over the past three years, a lot of people—even in our guestbook—have said, ‘We wanna see more of this or more of that.’ This is our chance to respond to those people.”
The growing pains of the museum seem to be at a peak, swinging in a pendulum-like fashion between the comforts of having existed while Gumbiner’s generosity was so easily accessible and now currently facing the hardship that is cultivating and displaying art in a world where money for such endeavors is dangerously low. In fact, last year’s report on philanthropic giving—of which MOLAA deeply depends on—noted that arts and culture receive roughly 10% of foundation giving but over half of those dollars are given to organizations whose budget exceeds $5 million, far beyond MOLAA’s current $3.4 million budget.
As with all pendulums, MOLAA simply has to find its moment of balance—which ultimately depends on not just the public at large, but the Long Beach-specific public. After all, MOLAA is a Long Beach institution and, even more importantly, a luxury we have—a public space for the country’s lone museum dedicated to modern and contemporary Latin-American art.
MOLAA’s current exhibition, Sociales: Débora Arango Llega Hoy, is on view until January 20 of next year. MOLAA is located at 628 Alamitos Avenue.