LARRY UNDERHILL/LOS ANGELES CONSERVANCY
Yesterday, curator Philipp Kaiser and a source close to the Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation said that the organization would open its hotly anticipated private museum in Los Angeles in mid-November. Kaiser, a former senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art L.A. and curator of the 2017 Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, has been chosen to curate the museum’s inaugural exhibition of works from the Marciano collection.
This afternoon, Dan Tanzilli, an independent publicist working with the museum, said that Kaiser did not have the correct information, and said, definitively, that the museum will not open until sometime after November. By telephone, the foundation’s collection director, Jamie Goldblatt, said, “We haven’t made a decision. We don’t feel comfortable doing that.” This evening, Tanzilli said that the opening will occur in “early 2017.”
The museum will open in a 100,000-square-foot former Scottish Rite Masonic temple on Wilshire Boulevard, which the brothers purchased for $8 million in 2013. The building, currently undergoing renovations by L.A.-based architects wHY, is slated for completion ahead of the inaugural exhibition, according to a representative of the firm, and from conversations with the publicists, it sounds like that is on track for September.
“The place is huge,” said Kaiser, “like twice as big as MOCA.”
Update, May 19, 5:30 p.m.: Information provided by publicists for the museum about the museum not opening in November was added. Andrew Russeth contributed reporting.
Update, May 19, 5:55 p.m.: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post misidentified Goldblatt’s title. This has been corrected. The “early 2017” opening date was also added.
Update, May 20, 7:25 p.m.: Corrected the location of wHY’s offices.