“El Playon” of the work’s title refers to a black scar that a volcanic eruption left in the earth more than a hundred years ago, just outside El Salvador’s capital city. The same area was used as a dumping ground for the bodies of the disappeared during the country’s 1980–92 civil war. Matching the shape of El Playon, 601ft² comprises some 1,500 pounds of molten amber that mimics flowing lava as it’s poured over a collection of various objects: volcanic stones, specially fabricated ceramic bones, and various items found in MacArthur Park, a main hub for the Salvadorean community in LA. It also includes letters and newspaper clippings related to the civil war that are difficult to read through the amber shell. After the show opened, Aparicio learned that the body of his half-sister had been discovered in El Playon by their father, artist Juan Edgar Aparicio, who fled El Salvador shortly afterward.

Now, Aparicio is working on a new amber work for this year’s Whitney Biennial. He is drawn to amber that trees secrete as a healing mechanism. But he also plans eventually to reiterate 601ft². Each new version will be, literally, darker: the artist plans to add a new layer of poured amber, further obscuring the documents and objects. “This is the most visible it’ll ever be,” Aparicio said. “That’s how memory works, how time works: you forget about it, archives are erased or destroyed.”

This impulse to capture something before it’s gone also appears in another ongoing series, “Caucho (Rubber).” In 2016 Aparicio started casting the bottom portions of Ficus trees, a non-native genus ubiquitous across LA, where, for decades, it has been subject to removal efforts. He applies a layer of rubber made from the Indigenous Salvadorean Castilla elastica, or Panama rubber tree. Aparicio leaves the rubber on the tree for several weeks before slowly pulling it off, creating a realistic impression of the tree’s bark: the knots and whorls, man-made carvings and graffiti, the discoloration from car exhaust and other pollution. At first, the “Caucho” works were faithful reproductions of the trees that hung from the wall like unstretched paintings. More recently, they are becoming more sculptural, as he’s started to incorporate new elements in them, like shards of glass or ceramic thorns. Now, he’s painting on their surfaces and stuffing some with the cotton fibers from ceiba (kapok) tree seeds.

These works powerfully evoke the unique Los Angeles cityscape. Aparicio was “interested in levels of human interaction that are recorded on the surface,” he said. Most of the trees he cast have since been cut down, and these works now serve as the only record of their existence, their previous lives, the marks imprinted on them. Ficus trees still abound across Los Angeles. There’s a municipal waiting list for the trimming of Ficus trees; the wait is upward of 10 years. The wait for tree removal is much longer. Aparicio added, “All to say, they can’t get rid of us even if they wanted to.”  

The long period between the initial exhibition and acquisition of the 16-by-45-foot flag was mostly due to logistics. “The reason we’re able to do it now is because Pope.L thought about the work in an evolving way and eventually came to think that there could be multiple ways that this work be installed or presented,” said MOCA senior curator Bennett Simpson, who also curated the 2015 exhibition. “The money side of it wasn’t the issue with this acquisition, and we didn’t do any special fundraising campaign for the acquisition.”

A version of Trinket was made specifically for the 2015 exhibition showcasing new and recent large-scale installations by Pope.L. In addition to the custom flag, the performance and sculpture work involved theatrical lights and four large-scale industrial fans — the type used almost exclusively on Hollywood film sets to create wind or rain effects. The high-powered air from the fans caused the 51-star flag to eventually fray and fall apart over the course of the 14-week exhibition. MOCA described the effect as “a potent metaphor for the rigors and complexities of democratic engagement and participation.”

A version of Trinket was also featured in Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the 2015 BET Awards.

While MOCA had been interested in acquiring Trinket soon after the exhibition, the large specialty fans repeatedly came up as an issue. In addition to their high price (Simpson would not specify the amount beyond “It’s a lot of money”), they are limited to one vendor located in the San Fernando Valley. “You can’t just buy them at the Home Depot,” gallery owner Susanne Vielmetter told ARTnews.

Simpson said the necessity of the industrial fans to Pope.L’s original vision of Trinket came with other curatorial considerations, such as audience capacity, insurance, and safety. “Wherever you do this, the building is full of moving air, and you can’t really have other works of art in the same space,” he said. “It’s not like you can do an installation of Trinket in a group show.”

The acquisition of Trinket was able to go forward after Pope.L came up with two alternative ways to install the immersive work in addition to the original concept shown in the Geffen Contemporary space. The first alternative was the large flag folded in the same manner presented at military funerals and displayed in a plexiglass box. The second alternative was installing the flag on a long wall in a shredded and ripped state. “And only one of them involved renting these huge fans and setting up the building to run the huge fans and have the flag fray over time,” Simpson said.

The museum’s acquisition agreement for Pope.L’s work means if MOCA does plan on installing the flag with the fans again for 15 weeks (or another time period), the fans would be rented, Trinket will fall apart and those materials will be disposed. “Therefore, if we want to stage it again, we would have to have start with a ‘new flag’,” Simpson said. “And that’s fine. The actual piece of fabric is kind of like an exhibition copy, in a way.”

One way to understand MOCA’s acquisition of Pope.L’s Trinket, as both of an object and a concept, is to consider how museums have begun to acquire performance art. “How do you acquire things that are impermanent, that are ephemeral, that change over time?,” Simpson said. “How do you take care of something that is, that will be different every time you decide to display it? Or show it or share it? I think that there’s a different answer for every work, there’s no kind of over-arching, right way to do something like that.”

“We just basically acquired the rights to do this again, and again, and again, according to a set of agreed upon rules or guidelines.”

Simpson said being able to finally acquire Trinket was an important opportunity for MOCA to add a major work from its exhibition program into its permanent collection, especially given that the show did not publish a catalog or travel to other institutions. “It’s like double dipping,” he said. “It affirms the museum’s work in multiple ways. It makes me proud of the museum, makes me proud of the work that we do.”

Trinket was conceived by Pope.L in 2008 after press coverage over politicians wearing American flag lapel pins, and whether that act demonstrated or signaled their patriotism in the right way. The massive size of the work is the opposite of a lapel pin, and its title refers to something small and cheap. For Simpson, the fact that the American flag continues to shift in meaning with each national election and events like the insurrection on January 6, means Trinket will continue to be meaningful in the future.

“Pope.L talks about this work as a time-based work,” Simpson said. “That it’s a kind of duress that is happening in time, and that the flag changes and falls apart, it changes over time, from the pressure of the winds. I think that’s beautiful and poetic but it will always be the case with this with this artwork. There will always be an artwork that demonstrates change.”

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the name of the artist.

In February, MOCA restructured its leadership, and Biesenbach was named artistic director. The announcement of his departure by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which manages Berlin’s state-run museums, comes just a week after MOCA named Johanna Burton as its new executive director. When MOCA announced Burton’s hire, its press department attempted to tightly control how the story was reported, creating controversy among critics like the Los Angeles Times’s Christopher Knight, who penned an op-ed about the announcement.

Biesenbach became executive director of MOCA in 2019 during a period of turmoil. Since then, the museum has continued to face difficulties of various kinds.

When the pandemic began in the U.S., in March 2020, 97 part-time employees were laid off; 69 more full-timers were furloughed, and Biesenbach and other members of leadership took pay cuts. Earlier this year, senior curator Mia Locks, who also joined MOCA in 2019, resigned, claiming that the museum was “not yet ready to fully embrace” to her diversity initiatives. The museum’s human resources director also quit, citing a “hostile [work] environment.”

When he was appointed director of MOCA, Biesenbach was director of MoMA PS1 in New York. His appointment was viewed by the museum community as a star hire, given his reputation for doing shows with big names like Björk and Marina Abramović. His shows drew both massive crowds and the wrath of critics.

Biesenbach is set to assume his new post at the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Museum of the 20th Century on January 1, 2022. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation’s announcement did not say whether he would retain a position at MOCA.

In a statement on Tuesday, MOCA said, “In light of the changed circumstances resulting from Klaus’ new appointment, Klaus will not serve as Artistic Director of MOCA.” Instead, he would act as an adviser to Burton, who would take on Biesenbach’s duties. MOCA said it did not plan to hire another artistic director.

Crowds outside the Neue Nationalgalerie during its reopening in August.

The Neue Nationalgalerie is considered one of Berlin’s top museums. It reopened after a six-year-long renovation project that cost $165 million this past August. Joachim Jäger, who is currently the museum’s director, oversaw that re-up.

The long-awaited Museum of the 20th Century is currently under construction and is expected to become a major institution within the Berlin scene. It is set to house Berlin’s grand collection of modern and contemporary art, which includes significant gifts from collectors like Erich Marx and Egidio Marzona. An opening date from the museum remains uncertain—reports from 2019 pegged it at sometime around 2026—though the rising costs of erecting the Herzog & de Meuron–designed building (currently estimated at $450 million) have aroused the suspicion of many Berliners.

Biesenbach’s new job will see him return to the city that initially made him famous. In 1991, he cofounded Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art and later became its first director. The museum, housed in a disused factory, went on to organize the first Berlin Biennale, in 1998.

Monika Grütters, Germany’s cultural minister, said in a statement, “Thanks to his many years of experience in [working] with globally important art museums, Klaus Biesenbach brings impressive international expertise to his new role. He knows Germany and the world and is correspondingly well networked. He is a firstclass choice to set the course for the future of the newly reopened Neue Nationalgalerie and the new Museum der Moderne as its new director. With his openness to the new and unexpected, Klaus Biesenbach will be a great asset to the Berlin museum landscape.”

Biesenbach’s hire wasn’t the only major museum announcement to come out of Berlin today, however. Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath were named directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof, a museum of modern and contemporary art in the German capital. They are currently associate directors at the Gropius Bau museum in Berlin, and are now at work on the next edition of the Biennale de Lyon, due to open in 2022.

Update, 9/14/21, 5:15 p.m.: This article has been updated to include a statement from MOCA.

Cramer once headed Paramount Television and was integral in launching shows such as The Love Boat, Wonder Woman, Dynasty, Mission: Impossible, and more to mass success. With the fortune he assembled, he bought hundreds of artworks. He also served on the boards of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In a 2012 interview with Christie’s, Cramer discussed three artists who became the cornerstones of his collection: Johns, Kelly, and Roy Lichtenstein, all of whom Cramer came to know personally. Over time, his collection also came to include a spread of artists spanning multiple generations, among them David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Joel Shapiro, Cecily Brown, Frank Stella, Susan Rothenberg, Mark Grotjahn, and more.

Richard Koshalek, the former director of MOCA, once told the Los Angeles Times that Cramer’s collection was “extraordinary.” Cramer ranked on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list 17 times between 1990 and 2008.

Born in 1931, Cramer moved to California in 1966 and eventually built out an expansive home for his holdings in Santa Ynez, about 40 minutes north of Santa Barbara. When, in 1997, Cramer announced plans to sell off 22 sculptures from his collection at Christie’s and said he would be relocating to New York, the Los Angeles Times called it a “major change in his life that represents a loss to Southern California.” Later on, he moved to Miami.

Cramer had become influential in Southern California because he was involved in the formation of L.A.’s MOCA in 1979. In a 1995 Vanity Fair interview, Cramer credited TV executive Barry Lowen with helping introduce a rising crop of collectors, including himself, to the work of artists like Eric Fischl and Donald Judd, and to gallerists like Larry Gagosian. Alongside collectors like Michael Ovitz, Eli Broad, and Donald L. Bren, Cramer was often credited at the time with stimulating an interest in buying art among Hollywood elite during the era. By the time Cramer left MOCA’s board in 1996, he had served as the board president and given a host of significant works to the museum.

When Cramer departed his Santa Ynez ranch, artworks from his collection were also given to the Tate in London, MoMA, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Among the works MoMA received was Kelly’s Three Panels: Orange, Dark Gray, Green (1986), a 34-foot-long painting composed of three giant swatches of solid color. “It’s exactly the kind of Kelly we didn’t have,” Kirk Varnedoe, then MoMA’s director, told the New York Times.

Periodically, Cramer parted ways with works from his collection at auction. In 2012, he sold $25 million worth of paintings and sculptures at Christie’s, including works by Johns and Kelly. But for the most part, it was rare for Cramer to sell the art he owned—mainly because he enjoyed admiring the work. In 2014, he told Architectural Digest, “I’ve always loved looking at and possessing things.”

The Headlines

MUSEUMS ARE CONTINUING TO DEACCESSION WORKS and send them to the auction block to help improve their balance sheets. The New-York Historical Society is parting with a Childe Hassam flag painting, with a low estimate of $12 million, at Sotheby’s next month, Katya Kazakina reports for Artnet News. Other institutions selling include the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Newark Museum of Art . Many are taking advantage of a temporary relaxation of industry rules that allow sales funds to go toward collection care. ARTnews looked at the deaccessioning boom earlier this year. Given museums’ strained finances amid the pandemic, “I definitely think there’s going to be an uptick on the need to sell,” one auction-house staffer said at the time.

THERE HAS BEEN ANOTHER ARTISTIC MISUNDERSTANDING: Earlier this month, a Seoul couple was arrested for defacing a painting that they believed was a participatory artwork. Now a rock climber has admitted to damaging petroglyphs by installing climbing bolts on a rock face in Utah, saying that he believed the markings were graffiti, the Art Newspaper reports. The petroglyphs are believed to have been created by the Fremont people, who lived in the area more than 700 years ago. “It’s wrong,” the man has said. “It shouldn’t have happened. It’s just poor education on my part, and I do take full responsibility.” Authorities are investigating.

The Digest

Big resignations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles: Senior curator Mia Locks quit last month, saying that MOCA was not committed to diversity programs. Its human resources director, Carlos Viramontes, tendered his resignation in February, claiming it was “a hostile environment.” The museum has rejected the allegations. [Los Angeles Times]

A Ukrainian businesswoman named Natalya Muzaleva, who runs a gallery in Abu Dhabi, reportedly offered to sell coronavirus vaccine doses to the Czech Republic, which rejected the offer. It is not clear if Muzaleva actually had access to the jabs. She told a reporter only that there was “no deal.” [Reuters/Al Jazeera]

More than 30 antiquities that were illegally taken from Afghanistan have been returned to its ambassador to the United States by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. They were found among the holdings of the art dealer Subhash Kapoor, who’s been accused of smuggling and theft. He is currently in jail in India. [The New York Times]

Los Angeles gallery Morán Morán is moving to a larger space at the corner of Western and Melrose Avenues, and opening a branch in Mexico City’s tony Polanco area. [Press Release]

Good news for the Prince of Liechtenstein. A French court ruled that a painting attributed to Lucas Cranach that he owns, which was was seized during a forgery investigation, must be returned to him. [The Art Newspaper]

A traditional Korean hanbok worn by BTS member Jimin on The Tonight Show will be auctioned off by Seoul’s Myart Auction. Bidding will start at about $4,500 on the garment, which has not been washed since the performance. [The Korea Times]

The Kicker

ARTISTS: YOU JUST CANNOT KEEP THEM DOWN. After hearing about the idea of creating coronavirus “bubbles,” the Belgian artist and social worker Alain Verschueren decided to do that literally, Reuters reports. He constructed a kind of miniature greenhouse that sits atop his shoulders and encases his entire head. (You really have to see this thing to appreciate it.) Verschueren told the wire service that his goal was “to cut myself off a world that I found too dull, too noisy or smelly.” However, the unusual contraption has had a curious effect: people love coming up to him to ask about it. “This isolation became much more a way of connecting,” he said. [Reuters]

Thank you for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.

About 50 workers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles have announced plans to form a union. In a release posted to the group’s Instagram, the potential union said it was seeking “fair compensation for all workers throughout the museum,” which earlier this week detailed plans to enact a new admission fee structure in January.

“We recognize that management has identified a need to shift workplace culture in order to make equity, diversity, and accessibility a greater priority,” the group said in the release. “So far, however, this has been a top-down structure that has involved spending undisclosed amounts of money on external consultants who speak on behalf of the entire staff. Instead of looking outside the museum for answers, we ask that leadership listen to its own workers and hear our needs directly.”

In a statement, a representative for the museum said, “While we respect the right of employees to decide whether or not they wish to be represented by a union, we do not believe that this union is in the best interest of our employees or the museum.”

MOCA’s new admissions structure will offer free general admission, thanks to a $10 million gift from Carolyn Clark Powers, president of the museum’s board. Fees to enter special exhibitions will increase, however, from $15 to $18.

The museum is now the second Los Angeles arts institution this month whose staff has begun the process of unionizing. The Marciano Art Foundation’s employees also launched a campaign to unionize, only to see the art space, founded by Guess owners Maurice and Paul Marciano in 2013, lay off at least 60 of them, citing “low attendance”; it then shuttered, with “no present plans to reopen.” (On social media, former workers at the Marciano Art Foundation have teased a nationwide protest against the space’s closure at Guess stores across the nation.)

The push to unionize at MOCA can be seen as part of a larger movement taking hold in the American art world now. Since employees at the New Museum in New York formed a union earlier this year, workers at the Guggenheim Museum, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and elsewhere have launched campaigns to unionize.

Mia Locks.

PARI DUKOVIC/©TRUNK ARCHIVE/COURTESY MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART LOS ANGELES

In one of his first major staffing moves since starting as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles six months ago, Klaus Biesenbach has named Mia Locks senior curator and head of new initiatives of the institution. She will begin at MOCA in July.

Locks has worked as an independent curator based in New York. In 2017, with Christopher Y. Lew, she curated the Whitney Biennial, which ranked among the most celebrated shows of its kind at the museum in recent memory. In 2015, with Douglas Crimp, Peter Eleey, and Thomas J. Lax, she organized the Greater New York quinquennial at MoMA PS1, where she was an assistant curator and oversaw exhibitions devoted to Math Bass, IM Heung-Soon, and Samara Golden.

Locks’s appointment—which comes coupled with news that MOCA has no plans to hire a chief curator to replace Helen Molesworth in that role, as reported by the Los Angeles Times—marks a homecoming of sorts. During a previous stint at MOCA, she helped organize, with Bennett Simpson, the 2012 exhibition “Blues for Smoke,” a survey that explored the influence of blues music on art-making. “I am delighted to return to Los Angeles and to MOCA, where I started my career,” Locks said in a statement. “I look forward to working with Klaus and the MOCA team on exhibitions and programs. I’m also very excited to develop a variety of initiatives that support MOCA’s efforts to be an equitable, forward thinking, and socially engaged cultural institution on a local, national, and international scale.”

Biesenbach said in a statement, “As a contemporary art museum, MOCA needs to anticipate and respond to the world around us, and Mia will help us to lead efforts to support the issues that artists care about most. For example, museums have to address pressing issues of equity and inclusion, and climate and ecology, among others. I know Mia will help bring attention to these issues and support MOCA in being a responsible citizen among citizens.”

The announcement came alongside news of promotions at the museum. Amanda Hunt has been promoted to a dual role as MOCA’s director of education and senior curator of programs. Bennett Simpson has been appointed to a new position as senior curator and administrative department head. And Anna Katz has been promoted from associate curator to curator.

Molesworth.

COURTESY MOCA

Christopher Knight, the art critic of the Los Angeles Times, has reported that Philippe Vergne, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, fired Helen Molesworth, MOCA’s chief curator, on Monday.

Details of Molesworth’s departure are not yet clear, and MOCA’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Knight writes that a message went out to the museum’s board implying that Molesworth had abruptly resigned, but he also cites the artist Catherine Opie, who is a MOCA board member, saying that Vergne fired Molesworth for ”undermining the museum.” Opie said she disagreed with that decision.

Molesworth joined MOCA in 2014 from the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. As chief curator, she made a focus of her tenure programs that addresses issues of race in the United States. Her curatorial credits include co-organizing a critically lauded Kerry James Marshall retrospective and partnering with the Underground Museum in Los Angeles.

Hunt and Katz.

LEFT: BRYAN CONLEY; RIGHT: MYLES PETTENGILL

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles has made two recent curatorial hires: Amanda Hunt, who will now be the museum’s director of education and public programs, and Anna Katz, who will be an assistant curator. Hunt began her position on March 1, while Katz, who is currently a curatorial fellow at the museum, starts hers on May 1.

Hunt was previously an associate curator at New York’s Studio Museum in Harlem, where she organized shows about Rashaad Newsome and Lorraine O’Grady. She has also worked on Pacific Standard Time’s performance and public art festival and the Hammer Museum’s 2012 Made in L.A. biennial.

Katz has been a curatorial fellow at MOCA since 2015. She has worked on recent shows at the museum devoted to Doug Aitken, Carl Andre, and Catherine Opie.

Helen Molesworth, MOCA’s chief curator, said in a statement that Hunt and Katz “share a keen commitment to history; to the pressing social causes of our current moment; a belief in the knowledge produced by artists; and a commitment to making all of the above available to the general public.”

Judithe Hernández’s The Purification (2013) will be featured in a two-person exhibition at the Millard Sheets Art Center, one of the newly announced participants in PST: LA/LA.

©2016 JUDITHE HERNÁNDEZ

Today the Getty Foundation announced an increase in funding, as well as expanded programming, for the third edition of its region-wide art initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which begins next September and focuses on Latin American and Latino art in relation to Los Angeles.

The Getty has added 24 cultural institutions to its official list of participating exhibition spaces, upping the total number to 75, as well as awarding more than $1.25 million in new grants, to the REDCAT arts center for an 11-day performance art festival in January 2018, and the LA Promise Fund and the Los Angeles Unified School District to ensure that Los Angeles–area students are able to visit exhibitions that are part of PST: LA/LA. The news means that a total of $15 million has been committed by a variety of funders to PST: LA/LA.

“To do justice to its vast and complex theme and engage audiences throughout the region, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA needs to be as encompassing as its subject,” said Jim Cuno, the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, in a statement. “We’re thrilled that the initiative is still growing, and we’re proud that the Getty is helping to realize these ambitions through additional grants.” Cuno hinted that additional grants and projects will be announced in coming months.

Among the new exhibitions announced are a history on pre-Columbian art in South America at the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, a survey of Cuban video art at ESMoA in El Segundo, and a two-person exhibition of pioneering Chicana artists Judithe Hernandéz and Patssi Valdez (a founding member of the collective ASCO) at the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona.

Also, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which will host the first major U.S. survey of Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino, announced that its Geffen Contemporary building will do a show with Argentine-born artist Adrián Villar Rojas that will include a new site-specific installation. The Broad, the private museum of L.A. philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, is also on board to participate in PST: LA/LA. Its exhibition has not yet been announced.

REDCAT has received $600,000 for its performance festival, and will organize its own programs as well as issue an open call for proposals from L.A.-area arts organizations. The festival will happen across the city and include both contemporary performance art as well as restagings of historical works.

The first edition of PST, which was well-received for its far-reaching and canon-expanding exhibitions, opened in October 2011 and carried the theme of “Art in L.A. 1945–1980.” The second edition in 2013 focused on modern architecture in the city. While more than half of the exhibitions take place in the L.A. area, PST also includes institutions in Orange County, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and the Inland Empire. Among the previously announced highlights of PST: LA/LA are LACMA’s Carlos Almaraz retrospective, the Hammer Museum’s “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985” exhibition, a retrospective of outsider artist Martín Ramírez at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (formerly the Santa Monica Museum of Art), an exhibition about the influence of Día de los Muertos art on Latinx artists in L.A. at Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights, and a retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar at the Vincent Price Museum of Art in Monterey Park.