Los Angeles’s prestigious but chronically underfunded Museum of Contemporary Art has fallen into crisis, writes Mike Boehm for the Los Angeles Times. Museum director Jeremy Strick said MoCA is seeking large cash infusions from donors, and this week he did not rule out the possibility of merging with another institution or sharing its collection of almost six thousand artworks. Federal tax returns show that even before the current national crisis, MoCA had been draining its reserves to pay operating expenses. In the meantime, the museum’s staff has grown. Unlike the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is partly controlled by the county, MoCA receives minimal government funding. Its annual budget has grown to exceed $20 million, but it relies on donors to pay about 80 percent of its expenses. When the gifts have fallen short, as they have more often than not during Strick’s nine-year tenure, the museum has gone into its savings.

By one important measure—“unrestricted assets,” money that can be used for any purpose—MoCA is in dire straits. Its federal tax returns show that early in this decade the museum had spent all $20 million of its unrestricted funds to meet routine operating costs. By mid-2007, it had borrowed an additional $7.5 million from “restricted” accounts, even though those are designated by donors for specific uses, such as education or buying art. “All the possibilities being explored involve MoCA retaining its identity, continuing its program, expanding its collection,” Strick said. But he added: “I think it is time for this city to step forward and offer the kind of financial support commensurate with the work being done.”

Meanwhile, art critic Christopher Knight has penned an open letter to MoCA’s board of trustees. “We are talking here about an irreplaceable cultural asset,” Knight writes, “one that has been instrumental in establishing the primacy of Los Angeles on the world’s cultural stage.” In the letter, Knight argues against renting or selling art from MoCA’s collection and against a merger with LACMA and instead supports cutting “MoCA’s unaffordable budget” and launching a capital campaign with a goal between $80 million and $100 million. “If LA’s civic renaissance as an art center is now to be declared over, and MoCA is to go the way of the Pasadena Art Museum, I fear for the city’s future. And I would not relish the thought of being one of those to blame.”