Hasta La Ideas

Compared to Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art‘s year of thrills and spills, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has had it pretty easy, beginning with the announcement last October that they’d be getting a $45 million donation to build a new Renzo Piano building. But while they’ve faired better than others in this particularly brutal, museum-feasting downturn in the economy, the LA Times reports that they’ve suddenly found themselves in another predicament: they’ve had too many retirements and resignations among their curating staff and now they’re in the middle of a hiring freeze. Though the LACMA says the freeze won’t affect finding replacements, we’ve seen how incredibly difficult and lengthy it can be to do said finding. But at least the LACMA isn’t facing immediate closures or mass-layoffs at the moment, so they should be able to sleep a little easier than many museums. Here’s a bit from Michael Govan:

“The recession is not helping me find a Chinese curator,” he says. “There’s a dearth of people who are able to run museums, so highly qualified curators are moving into those jobs.

“But you have to put all this in perspective. Turnover is good, especially when you are making transitions and doing new things. We haven’t been pushing people out. We are gaining more friends in high places. One of the marks of quality of a museum is that its curators move up in the world.”

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