Installation view of Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016 at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. | Photo: Courtesy of Hauser Wirth & Schimmel. OP-Art: Opinions and editorials about art, institutions, and the relationship between them.
The palatial, museological gallery Hauser Wirth & Schimmel finally opened its doors in Downtown L.A.'s Arts District this month. It's gorgeous and important and, while not exactly controversial, it is emblematic of this rather interesting moment in the city's intertwined cultural and economic milieux. Its interesting in ways that include both fanfare and skepticism, attracting droves of both devotees and detractors, notables and newcomers, scholars and scenesters.
The history of how the arts district became the Arts District has been a case study in the shifting L.A. culture tides since the late 1970s, along the lines of New York's SoHo, which was also once a hotbed of dirt-cheap, amenity-free industrial spaces occupied by intrepid artists and the vaguely dangerous criminal elements that kept rents on floor-through lofts affordable. Remember After Hours? Not even Griffin Dunne could get a taxi after midnight there to save his life. Like SoHo, the presence of artists in L.A.'s once slighty-seedy warehouse district gave rise to a community of galleries and cafes, then boutiques and developers. Soon enough, the artists and early venues were priced out of the area they inadvertently helped brand. It's an old story, but that doesn't stop opinions and sometimes tempers from flying every time it happens. To HWS's credit they have gone out of their way to use inclusive, good-neighbor language about public space, new audiences, easy access, and historical respect. Time will tell. But the truth is, none of that would matter to people here nearly as much, fabulosity quotient notwithstanding, if it weren't for that one name above the transom -- Schimmel.
Deborah Kass, Americas Most Wanted: Paul Schimmel, 1998-1999.
Paul Schimmel moved here from his native New York in 1981 to become at 27 the youngest-ever chief curator at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, now Orange County Museum of Art. At the time, Los Angeles -- and the downtown Arts District in particular -- were very different places than they are today. For one thing, L.A.'s hippest and most thoroughly branded neighborhood wasn't even officially named the Arts District yet. Colloquially, folks knew it as such since the late 1970s when the artists started populating the abandoned industrial properties in earnest. But it was still in full-on Bladerunner mode in 1981, largely a dystopia filled with who suffered most in the crack epidemic at the time. In fact, it wouldn't be until almost 15 years later, after a few recession-subverted false starts on the machinery of gentrification, that the city designated the Arts District as such. They put up signs, eased some zoning restrictions, and let the dream of the 1990s unfold with the gritty urban romance, intrepid punks and leather-clad culturati we came to know and love. But first, back in 1981, Schimmel met his soon-to-be lifelong friend, the late Mike Kelley, at one of the area's now iconic loft parties, and that was history in the making. Fates aligned and soon enough, stars were born.
In 1990, Schimmel was appointed chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), a position he held until June 2012, when amid highly publicized Jeffrey Deitch-instigated turmoil at the museum, Schimmel resigned. Two of MOCA's three campuses are located within walking distance of the new HWS, with the Little Tokyo location, featuring a gallery inside named for Schimmel, seemingly in a gesture of apparent solidarity by board members upon his unceremonious departure, pretty much down the street. So although Schimmel himself has said and done nothing publicly to stoke the flames, it's hard for the arts community to not to see his return to power as a kind of Count of Monte Cristo revenge fantasy; prodigal doesn't even cover the magnitude of this homecoming. And by all indications, his plans for the HWS exhibition program picked up right where his MOCA to-do list left off, too. Except more so. Because as hard as it might be to believe, his Hauser & Wirth resources are as if not even more deep-pocketed, internationally-scoped, and historically-minded than the museum that made him famous.
Drawing of the Globe Grain & Milling Co. headquarters and warehouse, located at 907 E. 3rd Street, at S. Garey Street (left), in Los Angeles. | Photo: Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library.
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Highlights of his tenure at MOCA included the explosively dark-hearted, brow-furrowing, violently anti-archetype 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter: Los Angeles Art in the 1990s, which freaked art folks out pretty good when it opened to huge crowds and a few skeptical reviews from establishment critics. It included works by Chris Burden -- whose 20-year survey Schimmel had mounted during his time at OCMA -- Meg Cranston, Llyn Foulkes, Mike Kelley, Liz Larner -- who is in the inaugural HWS sculpture by women show today, Paul McCarthy -- whose daughter Mara operates an avant-garde, historically-minded gallery called The Box mere steps from HWS, Ray Pettibon, Charles Ray, Jim Shaw, Nancy Rubins, and Robert Williams.
In 2007, he caught everyone off guard again with his Vuitton-bedecked Takashi Murakami survey, whose inclusion of a logo boutique was first denounced as cynical, soon hailed as brilliantly prescient, and is now frequently emulated. He helmed the museum's Pacific Standard Time contribution with a sort of follow-up prequel to Helter Skelter in the form of Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981, which basically took a closer look at the Nixon-Reagan continuum of political unrest
