Via: LA TIMES Culture Monster.
Anyone wondering what Jeffrey Deitch’s next step will be as the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art now has an answer. In two words: street art.
Local artists and gallery owners have been whispering about the possibility, and this week Deitch confirmed his plans for a 2011 show. “We’re going to send out the press release in a few weeks,” he says. “Right now we’re trying to iron out sponsorship. It’s going to be the first major museum survey of the history of graffiti and street art presented in the United States.”
The show is called “Art in the Streets,” not to be confused with “Born in the Streets,” recently staged by the Cartier Foundation in Paris. Deitch says the MOCA endeavor will be bigger, broader and more historical in sweep. “A show at this level has never been done anywhere.”
The choice of subject is no surprise to anyone who knows Deitch. Since the 1970s, he has supported New York artists like Lee Quinones, Futura, Fab 5 Freddy, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. More recently, Deitch Projects, his former gallery, showed the work of California anti-heroes Barry McGee and Shepard Fairey.
The MOCA show will cover the 1970s through the present, including international street-art stars such as Banksy from London and Space Invader from Paris. (“Banksy is very excited about the show,” says Deitch. How does he know, considering Banksy’s notoriously elusive nature? “We communicate through his assistant Holly.”)
But also expect a substantial focus on Los Angeles: the legacy of cholo graffiti in the 1970s, the
— Jori Finkel
Image: Mister Cartoon’s Ice Cream Truck, 2004, photo by Eriberto Oriol.