The Crisis in MOCA: The Culture Industry and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

In a moment of crisis, Eli Broad, the founding chairman and trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, pledged $30 million to keep the financially strapped museum afloat. His resulting leverage over the museum, and his goal to increase attendance by presenting exhibitions that appeal to a mass audience, raises questions about the social responsibility of the contemporary art museum today. Considering arguments made by cultural theorists in the period that marked the initial formation of an autonomous museum for contemporary art, Bartholomew questions whether MOCA has been led astray from its foundations as a museum by and for artists.