The MOCA Murakami-LVMH store, part two

Continuing from yesterday's post...

There are still a few issues around the Louis Vuitton store in MOCA's Takashi Murakami retrospective that are worth considering: For several years the biggest story in contemporary art hasn't been the 'content' of artworks, it's been art-selling, the market for market's sake. MOCA's inclusion of a luxury boutique in the exhibition risks reinforcing the idea that contemporary art is a sly con, a rich man's playground, an attempt to create financial value for the already wealthy instead of an arena for creative thought.

Ironically, Murakami curator Paul Schimmel told me that he thinks that in some ways Murakami's work for LVMH and his mass-produced tchotchkes for Kaikai Kiki address my concern in precisely the opposite way you might expect: "Artists really do want... to reach huge non-art audiences," he said. "They do. That's clear. The notion that Takashi is making all of these products because of some sort of mass-marketing-money greed... no. He loves the audience. I'll tell you, compared to the money you make making a painting or a sculpture, you could sell a zillion widgets and it wouldn't get there."

I asked Schimmel if MOCA had thought about changing the context of the Murakami boutique, say installing it in the MOCA Store in Santa Monica (which, apparently, has ceased to exist since Schimmel and I talked about this). "No," he said. "It is part of the fabric of the whole museum. Putting [the Louis Vuitton store] out there would be a stupid commercial venture. I wanted it truly to be an aesthetic experience. The visitors relationship to that part of the show is the action that takes place in it." (Which gives the whole thing a bit of an early-Nauman flair, but that's another story.)

And there's no question that when any non-profit organization does something controversial that it must do it transparently, that it must effectively communicate with the public. Obviously MOCA didn't.

FInally, let's not give MOCA too much credit for not taking a cut of Louis Vuitton's sales here. AAM and AAMD rules make it clear that that was never an option. (Although the last time AAMD held a member institution to one of its own rules was during the McKinley administration.) The aspect of this with which I am most uncomfortable is this: Non-profit organizations are not supposed to allow for-profit businesses to make money from spaces dedicated to their mission. That's clearly happening here. But Schimmel has a point: The commercial luxury goods are a key part of the artist's oeuvre. I guess that being true to the artist's work is more important, so the LVMH retail interaction should be here. But still... I'm wary of creeping Tut-ification.

Related: I have more in my notebook about how the store came about as part of the exhibition and such. More, perhaps, when I see the show next month.