Larry King on almost 80 years ... dishing on Deitch ditching MOCA ... called a "cracker," Clay Russell tells us about his eureka moment ... why did a Lomita builder collect 55,000 dresses?
Artist John Baldessari: Don't blame Deitch for MOCA's problems
Most of the principals in Jeffrey Dietch's exit from LA's Museum of Contemporary Art aren't talking. The museum issued a short statement. Former chief curator Paul Schimmel isn't commenting. Ditto for former board members and artists Ed Ruscha and Catherine Opie.
But artist John Baldessari, who left MOCA's board left last year, saying “to live with my conscience I just had to do it,” spoke in depth with Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson this morning.
"I was surprised," he said, saying he thought Deitch would stay the full 5 years of his contract. Baldessari recalled why he left the board last July: '"I began to be more and more apprehensive of the program of MOCA, just thinking it was getting to be more and more afield from what I thought MOCA should be. And then I read in the newspaper one morning that a planned show of Jeffrey was going to be about disco, and I just said, "You know, I don't think I should be on the board."'
Deitch, as KPCC's Adolfo Guzman Lopez explains, was a controversial hire in 2010. "He was hired with no experience running a non-profit museum. No experience running a big institution like this. He had made his name running a very high profile gallery in New York."
Baldessari may not have liked Deitch's program, but the museum hired him and you shouldn't blame Deitch for that. "I don't think Jeffrey should be demonized. He did what he does. It was just too large a dose. The real problem was the vision of the board. Maybe they just were hoping to challenge what a museum can do, and a was a little too much."
Would Baldessari rejoin the board if the museum asked him to? "Yes, I think if it were a program that I could embrace. I love MOCA, I love what it's been, what it could be."
OCMA Triennial: Artist Hugo Crosthwaite merges high and low art via Tijuana
If you've listened to Off-Ramp lately, you might've heard our visits to the California Pacific Triennial, a new group show at the Orange County Museum of Art. The museum spanning exhibit focuses on artists whose lives and work are impacted by the Pacific ocean.
First, curator Dan Cameron brought us his thesis for the exhibit. Last week, Australian video artist Shaun Gladwell explained his two channel installation, titled Broken Dance. And there's other video artists and painters to check out, if you haven't already.
This time, Off-Ramp producer Kevin Ferguson talks with Hugo Crostwaithe, whose installation, titled Carpas, makes up the better part of OCMA's front lobby.
Patt Morrison and the mysterious ring at the Natural History Museum
This is a story about a remarkable ring.
This is a royal ring, crafted of diamonds and gold, with a mysterious crown and an even more mysterious backstory. It came to the Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park nearly 40 years ago, and it was said to have belonged to Catherine the Great, Empress of All the Russias, who gave it to a lady in waiting. But, as President Ronald Reagan said of his dealings with the Soviet Union, “trust – but verify.” That’s just what the museum did. KPCC’s Patt Morrison went sleuthing for the ring’s real story.
VIDEO: Larry King on nearing 80, 'Larry King Now' on Hulu, Carlos Slim, Tammy Faye, & bad interviews
He's so ubiquitous, it's easy to take Larry King for granted. He was the king of late night radio for years, then held down Larry King Live for 25 years at CNN. All of that coming after the first stage of his career blew up after an arrest in the early 70s. The charges were dismissed in a few months, but he had to rebuild everything.
In November, King turns 80, but you wouldn't know it to watch his new show, Larry King Now, on Hulu, which is produced by Ora TV, the production company he owns with Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim.
I asked how the web-only show on Hulu feels different. "Well, this is much more relaxed," he said. "The setting is different, it's not as kinetic. It's less newsy. But it comes down to: the delivery system is different, but I'm doing what I did years ago, which is who, what, where, when, why. I thought I could retire, and that was a mistake, but I lucked into this, and am very happy doing it."
King had established a friendship with Carlos Slim before his show ended on CNN, and during a visit, Slim told him he should come out of retirement. So, the billionaire is now the bank for Ora TV, and while King says the production company - in which he holds a 20% share - is in daily contact with Mexico, he says Slim is hands-off.
Does he miss anything from CNN? Yes, the breaking news. He tapes Larry King Now for broadcast throughout the week - the shows post at 2pm PST Monday-Thursday on Hulu and Ora TV. So when Osama Bin laden was killed, King says his first instinct was to run into the studio and go live. He couldn't, of course. But, he says, he does not miss the tabloid stuff he was obliged to do at CNN.
Special thanks to Ora TV for shooting and editing our Larry King interview on the set of Larry King Now.
Let's talk about race. Is it fair to call Clay Russell a cracker?
My husband and I were in downtown LA. An African-American man was on the cell phone in front of an apartment building. As we passed, I heard him say, "And now there's two crackers walking in front of my building." He saw my head jerk back, and he called out, "What, you don't like what you see?"
I hate this stuff.
There’s a lot of discussion right now about race in America, some of it calm and intellectual and some of it loud and vicious. Sometimes the discussion comes in the form of baseball bats smashing through car windows. But there’s no opportunity to talk to the people who could most enlighten me, or vice versa.
Sure, I could have stopped the other night and said to the man, “No, I don’t like what I hear.” But something told me that wouldn’t have been the time to expect civility. Being called a cracker didn’t hurt so much as it confounded me. “What did I ever do to you?”
Did he mean “cracker” in a derogatory way? I think he did. I also think that when the n-word is universally accepted as vile but is still used far too often, it’s natural to want to assign the same level of vitriol to a word you can use against those who hate you. But if that were the case, why would that man assume we hated him?
I’m not naïve enough to be truly confused about the anger. I’m a white man. I have it good – I get that. I’ve never been denied housing, a job or a promotion because of my race. As far as I know, no lady ever clutched her purse closer after seeing me board a subway. I’ve never been questioned by the police for no apparent reason.
People have shouted horrible things at me because they assumed I was gay, so there’s some overlap, but those moments have been rare.
Do I have my own prejudices? Sure I do. In 1980 in Houston, one man held a knife to my throat and another pointed a revolver at my temple while they went through my pockets. I had seen them cross the street but hadn’t worried as they walked behind me because one of the men was black and the other was white. The white man with the black man eased the nervousness I otherwise might have felt at dusk in a sketchy part of Houston.
Growing up in Houston in the 1960s, I saw and heard plenty of discrimination. But over and over my parents said, “Black people are just the same as us except for the color of their skin.” And I believed it. … So much so that when I grew up and began to hear about affirmative action – especially in the University of California-Bakke case of the late 70s – I was confused. “We’re all equal, yet they want special treatment?” It confused and bothered me.
But I had applied a far-too-simple strain of logic to the issue. I thought that if everybody just accepted the equality thing, the problem would be solved. It wasn’t until years later that I read President Johnson’s 1965 commencement address at Howard University. He said, ‘You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.’
Still it’s reasonable to ask how much is enough. When is everyone on the starting line together? Where’s the checklist that we can wave over our heads, proclaiming, “We did it!” Those questions will be argued for a long time but my guess is that checklist won’t ever exist; it won’t be that easy. The damage has been too great.
Paul Brockmann collected 55,000 dresses over 50 years. Now he's selling them.
Saturday, Paul Brockmann will continue to dismantle his obsession. That's when the 78-year old builder from Lomita will sell off, with luck, a few thousand of the dresses he's collected over 50 years.
He started collecting them in the 1940s, when he lived in post-war Bremen, Germany. It was love at first sight, he says, with Margot, the woman who'd become his wife. They met on the dance floor, where the swish of taffeta conjures up an old-fashioned era, a more elegant time.
Paul and Margot married and continued dancing every chance they got, and, he says, he never wanted her to have to wear the same dress twice, so he started buying them. But now, with 55,000 dresses in her closet, Margot would have to live 150 years before she'd be in danger of repeating herself.
Paul readily admits it's an obsession, and he agrees with his daughter that it makes sense to sell them. They're holding periodic sales, including one this Saturday at his warehouse in Gardena. By the way, this weekend's event is the last free sale. In the future, they'll be charging $10 to get in.
The sale is Saturday, July 27, from 10a-3p, at 13208 Estrella Avenue Suite C, Gardena, CA 90248. There's more info on the family's website.