Deitch it is for MOCA

As expected, MOCA did choose New York gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch as its new director. Here's some of the coverage and reaction — LAT, NYT, Lee Rosenbaum — and a link to Deitch's interview with Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes. Sample:

TG: Being the public face of today's art to a diverse community such as Los Angeles, probably the most diverse city in America, is very different from selling art to rich mostly white men, isn't it?

JD: That is not at all how I conceived my role at the gallery. First of all I've run a public gallery with three spaces and with lots of public projects. Ninety-nine percent of my constituency running my gallery is the art-public, same type of public as the public of MOCA.

And the sales to art collectors -- who are not at all just rich, white men -- that's not the way it is anymore at all. We sell all over the world and a lot of our clients are women, maybe even half of our clients are women. That's the part that corresponds to raising money from trustees and other people in the community. I don't feel that I am going into a completely different world, but a lot of the same people, same principles.

It's obviously quite different going from the private sector that is commercial-sector, to the public sector supported by contributions and some revenue streams that have nothing to do with the commerce of art. But I feel that what I've been doing at Deitch Projects is in a way running my own private institute of contemporary art.

Previously at LA Observed:
MOCA's choice looks to be Jeffrey Deitch