Brother, Can You Spare a Painting?

The most conspicuous let-this-be-a-lesson example is the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. The museum has been offering "world class" (a term art-world boosters love) exhibitions since it opened in two downtown buildings. One, designed by Arata Isozaki, opened at the beginning of the boom in 1985; the other, several blocks away, is a gigantic Gehry-renovated former police-car garage. Trouble is, under the recently resigned director, Jeremy Strick, it spent down its endowment's principal until it teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. MOCA had to be rescued by $30 million from L.A.'s generous billionaire Eli Broad. In return, the museum promised to match Broad's money with its own donations, and to gather more shows more cheaply from its own collection. This will mean fewer imported extravaganzas of "breaking news" kinds of art, and more exhibitions of works that the museum, upon reflection, has actually deemed good enough to own.

It's tempting to think that this overdue economic shakeout is going to return the contemporary-art world to sanity. "It may reiterate that the market is not the ultimate arbiter of what art is important," says West Palm Beach, Fla., gallery owner Tim Eaton. But things may have to get worse on their way to getting better. Contemporary museums are reporting abrupt 30 and 40 percent declines in donations, with much of the drop-off coming from their wealthiest patrons. "The bad news is that while the operation will be a success, we're going to lose some very fine patients," says Jack Rutberg, L.A.'s longtime dealer of solid modernist painting. He means that some good artists, and some good galleries, will go out of business.

Although Eaton thinks that "a real ethical realignment in the art world, much less our general society, is too much to even dream about," some silver linings are appearing in the clouds. "The quality of the art could possibly improve under hard conditions," says Carroll Janis, a private dealer of blue-chip moderns. In other words, mediocre, over-hyped museum exhibitions will get a little rarer. Less imitative, overpriced work will bathe in the quartz lighting of galleries. Art-world denizens may even get a little nicer. "This fall at the Frieze Art Fair in London, gallerists were actually interested in discussions about the works they showed," says German critic Ute Thon. "In former years they'd just ignore you if you didn't wave your checkbook." Montreal conceptual artist Jocelyn Fiset hopes that "the current crisis will allow artists who do less material and more ephemeral, less manufactured and more nomadic kinds of art to emerge from the shadows." That's a pretty idealistic hope, but idealism—rather than greed and ostentatiousness—has always been the force behind the creation of the best art. In the aftermath of the contemporary art world's radical deprivation, there's a good chance it'll rise again.

© 2009