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A collection of Artillery experts — contemporary art collectors on both coasts, who spend more time every day thinking about art and the art market than most of us do sleeping — offered the long view.
Jeffrey Deitch is a product of Warhol, surrounding himself with the young, attractive and edgy. "As kooky as it was, his gallery signified a root-based change in atmosphere; it wasn't just a stroll into a quiet Soho gallery," according to New York collector Carol McCranie. "He grabbed headlines, but he didn't show the really big guns, and other galleries were not threatened by him." He's certainly proved that he can put on a show and repeatedly draw crowds worthy of Studio 54, although New York collector Michael Hort notes that Deitch didn't really represent artists. Brooklyn Museum director Arnold Lehman considers that Deitch brings with him one thing even contemporary museum directors lack, and that's intimacy with artists. As a Harvard Business School grad and Citibank alum, Deitch is well-known on the international scene and for that reason, Hort adds, he should be able to help MOCA secure international trustees, which it currently lacks. The ramifications for the international art market are nothing less than the creation of a new paradigm: Brooklyn Museum's Lehman points to the furor raised by Deitch's appointment as justification for MOCA's qualified risk. "Deitch knows history, knows LA, knows issues related to money and is a wise forecaster of what contemporary art is all about. This move is an international statement," he said in a phone call.
It is also a significant development from the standpoint of collecting, for a museum that called its major 30-year retrospective (in 2009) "Collections," and whose Board has seated some notable collectors, among them MOCA financial bailout hero Eli Broad. Hort points out that Deitch has built amazing collections in his career as a consultant and dealer. Lehman, a longtime colleague of Deitch's, with perhaps the clearest idea of his new duties, refutes the notion that this move is an attempt to shore up contemporary art values. "Museums play a small role in determining art's value, in these days of art fairs," he said. "They put more emphasis on art, less on the value of art." He points out that Deitch has supported a lot of artists for the value of their message. The Times announcement portrayed Deitch himself calling the art in his most recent show "practically unsalable." You might say he's been mounting museum shows for a while. With regard to questions of conflict of interest, in light of Deitch's career as a gallery owner and contemporary collector, most collectors agree, as Molly Barnes said, that it's "not a conflict of interest — of course it is!" but that, as Angeleno Victoria Dailey wrote in an e-mail, Deitch is "too smart to have any conflict of interest once he goes forward." Lehman points to the planned closure of Deitch's New York galleries as indicating substantial lengths Jeffrey Deitch will go to clear the air of any aura of conflict of interest. "Anyone who's really involved is going to have conflicts," Hort adds. "Look, he didn't take the job for the money. He thinks he can make a difference, and I think he can."
Dailey forecasts that Deitch will apply his "legendary" energy and vision to LA. Local collector Diana Zlotnick hopes for a director who will import more art from outside, as a source of comparison to the inventive art coming out of LA, and who will encourage curators to look for meaningful art at the beginning of artists' careers. Is the art party over for New York? Not a single collector in this group believes it. "Deitch isn't the only party in town," says the New Museum's Laura Skoler. "Gagosian has more galleries, and there's Gladstone, Marian Goodman. For a year, nobody's been out shopping, but [New York]'s getting renewed now." With Deitch making scenes in LA, "LA will come into its own," wrote Zlotnick, who has published LA's Newsletter on the Arts since 1979. "There will be an east coast art center and a west coast art center." Or, if the New York art party is dead, wrote New Yorker McCranie, "It died with Warhol. Everything after Warhol is an after-party."
Deitch's last show at his Manhattan gallery will be recent work by Shepard Fairey, "American Heroes," on view at 18 Wooster St. in Soho; May 1–June 1, 2010. ■