February 03, 2006
Michael Govan is leaving the Dia Foundation after 12 years for Los Angeles, where he will become Director and CEO of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, commonly referred to as LACMA. Both institutions have experienced phenomenal growth in recent years. Although Dia shuttered its Chelsea museum on West 22nd Street and will open a facility under the new High Line park in the coming years, it was under Govan's directorship that some of the most fascinating long-term exhibits were held there. It was also a time of extreme transition, in which the long-term, large-scale projects of the original Dia Foundation became part of a much larger master plan along the lines of "big is beautiful."
Govan is presently also co-curator of a traveling Dan Flavan retrospective; Flavin's works grace both the former West 22nd Street facility (which can still be viewed streetside if you walk by at night) and Dia: Beacon, for which Govan must again be commended for bringing to life. Indeed, Beacon is one of the most innovative and fascinating art museums to open in the past decade in the United States, and there is no doubt that was on the trustees' minds at LACMA in choosing Govan. For LACMA is undergoing an unprecedented expansion, and groundbreaking for a new $145-million first phase, designed by Renzo Piano, took place just last month. LACMA's operating budget is roughly three times that of Dia, and has a sizeable staff.
While I've heard rumors from time to time about bad moves of certain Dia trustees as well as conflicting accounts of how Dia's once mighty endowment skidded through turbulent times in the mid-1990s, there can be no doubt that Govan is one of the most intriguing personalities in the museum world (specifically, in late 20th century art) as well as a keenly skilled fundraiser. It's worth looking back at some Dia programs and the direction Dia took both before and under his leadership:
From 1987 to 1994, a number of long-term exhibits by Joseph Beuys, Jenny Holzer, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Robert Gober, On Kawara, and Katharina Fritsch stood out at the West 22nd Street facility. While the work of Beuys, Flavin and Dan Graham became an integral part of the overall experience at West 22nd Street, it was arguably the millennial renovation that put both Dia and Chelsea on the map. Hitherto, Dia was mainly an insider destination, and far-west Chelsea had yet to see the rampant and at times roughshod renovations that would come to characterize it as the new SoHo. (Once comme des garçons hit West 22nd Street, it was clear the mothership had brought in all manner of commercial pods, irrespective of how avant-garde they claim to be.) Yet the first time I saw Dia's new main floor with Jorge Pardo's Project and bookshop, it was plainly obvious things had changed forever. Similarly, as Dia's fortunes rose, Govan's ambitions rose exponentially as well, and the ambitious fundraising for Beacon began in earnest. Yet ironically, it was not too many months after the opening of Dia: Beacon and the rebranding of West 22nd Street as Dia: Chelsea that it became clear the original outpost would be moving on. Given Dia's pioneering status and the impending High Line renovation, it somehow made sense that Dia locate itself amidst the frenetic energy that has come to represent the Meatpacking District. (A lengthy article can be found here about it.) Given the real estate churn and wild speculation, the ossified SoHo art scene that transmogrified itself in Chelsea yet again became ossified, stratified...perhaps even dematerialized...as the shopping mall-ization of Manhattan continued apace. The writing (specifically, graffiti) was on the walls of West 22nd Street: Dia would pack up and go, even amidst a renovation. Of course, given that the Meatpacking District resembles an open-air Vitra design workshop, Dia as well will be transmogrified in version 4.0, probably along the lines of Ad Reinhardt or Guy Debord theory.
Meanwhile, Dia's other long-term and site-specific installations garnered newfound attention. In spite of the skyrocketing SoHo rents and associated construction chaos in lofts and home furnishings stores surrounding their facilities, Walter DeMaria's Broken Kilometer on West Broadway and Earth Room on Wooster Street still continue to see a steady trickle of visitors. Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty in Utah's Great Salt Lake received an unusual number of visitors in recent years, thanks primarily to low water levels that made the spiral visible like almost never before. With last year's major exhibition at the Whitney, Smithson's work has enjoyed a tremendous revival. And a visit to remote New Mexico to stay overnight at Walter DeMaria's Lightning Field during the summer months is something that anyone with the financial resources to do so ought to do. It is an astounding place, and I do not exaggerate when I say my visit there was on par with seeing the great stone moai of Easter Island. The experience of getting to the Lightning Field, the communal dynamics of staying there with strangers, as well as observing the field are uniquely American and yet somehow otherworldly. DeMaria had a keen eye for a harmonic...well, I digress.
Which gets back to Govan and the very essence of Dia: long-term exhibits of groundbreaking and fascinating artists. It's impossible to forget the astounding Louise Bourgeois spider, or the monumental Warhol series first commissioned for the Lone Star foundation, the precursor to Dia. And with affiliated institutions including the Chinati Foundation in Texas and the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, it is obvious how much Dia has on its plate. Some critics wonder whether Dia is too big now, an unwieldy dinosaur. As one Swiss critic puts it: "To maintain the structure he created they will need lots of money. And this might affect the program, in particular of the NYC branch once it reopens. i.e. it will have to be more commercial, market-oriented etc." In fact, the rebranding of Dia was very much in evidence on opening day at Beacon, with Dia notebooks and other merchandise. On the other hand, this is an increasing trend across the United States, and the recently massively-expanded DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, with its array of branded products, is another example of how merchandising plays a large role in a reconfigured space.
So was Govan a particularly adept visionary at Dia, or merely a very skilled administrator and fundraiser? Did he simply follow Dia's clear and distinct basic concept, only rising to the occasion when Dia again became flush with cash, or was the massive expansion to his credit? As one critic writes: "It remains to be seen whether he did not inadvertently end up destroying Dia." Perhaps, therefore, it was a foregone conclusion or the obvious time that Govan would ultimately move on to a larger institution. In any event, New Yorkers will see Govan's vision in the forthcoming High Line museum, and Los Angelenos—already enjoying some of the most avant-garde galleries and exhibits in America today—will see more of Govan's big ideas in the near future.
photograph (c) Dia Foundation - Katharina Fritsch "Rat King/Rattenkönig"
Tags:
andy warhol museum, bernd and hilla becher, broken kilometer, chinati foundation, deyoung museum, dia beacon, dia chelsea, dia foundation, earth room, high line, jenny holzer, joseph beuys, katharina fritsch, lacma, lightning field, meatpacking district, michael govan, on kawara, robert gober, robert smithson, soho, spiral jetty, walter demaria, whitney
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Posted on 2/3/2006
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