The word he kept returning to was “conversation,” which, under less pressing circumstances, might have described our interview, except that Philippe Vergne, MOCA’s new director, was on a something of a treadmill. He had scarcely been on the job 10 days, and had already weathered a flurry of interviews and media inquiries on top of a dense schedule of meetings with staff, board members, artists and curators. It was understood that Artillery’s interview would be all business. But there was nothing rushed or strained about the impression he conveyed. I was struck by his nonchalance. He looks like the French intellectual he is, filtered through years of American seasoning—the trademark beveled rectangular eyeglass frames and wavy reddish blond hair cresting over his forehead, the restrained but relaxed monochromatic sartorial style; self-possessed yet unassuming. I liked that he was wearing jeans (blue)—a contrast with his predecessor’s hipster-tweaked Savile Row–Turnbull & Asser style. (Is this the art world version of “normcore”?) As thoroughly French as he is, he seems at ease in America (and Los Angeles) in a way he might not be in France. He could be Tintin embarking on the California phase of his great American adventure.

What unfolded during the course of the interview were the sketches and starting points of many future conversations. This is a word that’s frequently heard in art and cultural circles, but coming from Vergne it sounds refreshingly free of cant, meaningful and generous. He seems to grasp how conversations evolve organically; and clearly understands how to create the psychological and intellectual, as well as temporal, space for them. It’s understood that all of this moves toward a larger cultural conversation that not only impacts institutions, but an entire world of intellectual inquiry. Most critically at this point in MOCA’s history, Vergne seems to possess both a comprehensive understanding of the curator’s mission and a strong sense of institutional integrity. 

ARTILLERY: You’ve said that your role as a director is to “enable curators to be what they are at the highest level. By doing that, you enable the artist.” How exactly does the curator enable the artist? 
Philippe Vergne: It’s through conversations, relationships, trust; at times, critical feedback, understanding the vision. Our role is to work in such a way as to make the vision possible. I’ll give you one example related to the history of this institution—a project that Bob Gober had. After being approached by MOCA [about an exhibition], Bob Gober said, “I’d like to do this project”; and that was the beginning of a conversation that ended up being this amazing commission that Bob did at the Geffen. Without trust, without the relationship, without this conversation, this kind of project couldn’t happen. That’s the thing you cannot name; that allows artists to go beyond themselves, beyond what the institution envisions. It’s something that develops over time, not a one-off. In the best scenarios, artists see institutions as partners. 

You’ve also said that you want to “let the curators be curators” and that “the role of the director is to support the curators.” How do you plan to control and exert your own imprint upon the museum’s overall direction and vision? 
I would almost answer the same way—through conversations, trust. Of course I have ideas. I have desires for exhibitions—not necessarily to do myself, but that I would like to see. There are artists I think who deserve to have exhibitions or projects; and that’s a conversation I want to have with the curators. I think my role is to share what I think should happen from my understanding of the institution; and also listen to the curators who are specialists, and learn about artists or situations, history that I don’t know. Listening and learning from them, and understanding what fits in the mission of the institution; then working in such a way so that it can happen: generating the resources; making sure all the wheels of the institution are turning in the same direction so that when the curator is working with an artist, and when the art is installed, they feel the institution is committed to them.

I understand your first appointment will be a new chief curator. Have you had any discussions about this appointment with Paul Schimmel?
I’ve known Paul since 1994; so we go back for a good 20 years. I have tremendous respect for Paul; and so I have conversations with him—not necessarily about the next chief curator. But for me, he’s someone who has a tremendous legacy and I need to understand from him the same way I need to understand from curators here that I need to go to—Ann Goldstein; I talk to Pontus Hulten every evening.

What would you like to see from MOCA’s curators? 
Unconventional thinking. I want them to teach me something. I want them to surprise me and surprise the audience. I want them to make an imprint on the art world that is unexpected. I want them to be able to take the audience to the edge of what they know and at the edge of what they’re comfortable with, at the same time giving them the context to understand what they don’t. I want them to build relationships with artists. There are a number of artists identified with this institution, for example, the artists on the board. But I think it’s also very important that another group of artists start to identify with MOCA as the home for their exhibitions, as the home for their work in the collection. 

Do you have any specific plans to engage LA’s artist community with commissions, or other initiatives, or possibly public programs?
I love learning directly from the artists, so I think it’s a conversation I need to have here: how do we engage them? When I was at the Walker, it was a Walker tradition that every year we had an artist-in-residence available to people, to the staff, working with the audience. And it was not necessarily [only] artists from Minneapolis. When the artist is in the room you have a different dynamic. With Dia, we had a still longer tradition called Artists on Artists. Here I need to understand a little bit more. But they need to be here—whether artists from Los Angeles or artists from New Delhi. 
The fact is that Los Angeles today has a very unique concentration of artists—and I say today, but this has been true for some time. Is Thomas Demand [who recently relocated from Berlin] an LA artist? Or is Gabriel Orozco a Parisian artist? Jeff Wall just moved here. Again I would go back to this idea of passage. A city which is not fluid, a city that closes itself and doesn’t invite or stimulate passage is a city as museum—a “museum city.”

What was your own take-away from Dia? What did you learn there that might be applied here at MOCA or at any similar institution? 
It raised my standard—not necessarily my aesthetic standard; but that was part of it. There was and still is something extraordinary at Dia: that Dia has always elected to do less, but more in depth—whether it’s a lecture, a performance, a commission or an exhibition. What I learned from Dia is if you don’t fully follow the vision of the artist, you might fail. What I learned from Dia is that if you compromise your vision, you compromise your audience, you compromise the integrity of the institution. The key part of institutional success is to respect the integrity of the artist’s vision and the integrity of the work. 

Your deaccessioning of certain pieces in the Dia collection, including some well-loved Cy Twomblys, garnered some controversy. Do you anticipate any “pruning” at MOCA on the order of what was done at the Dia Foundation? To answer that, even at Dia I would have preferred that the collection remain intact. But the circumstances at some point didn’t give us a choice. You have to measure. On one hand, we had 30 works that belonged to Patrick Lannan, 30 works including a room of Donald Judd, very important late Chamberlain, five Robert Smithsons, eight Agnes Martins, three installations by Bruce Nauman, and an entire exhibition of Hanne Darboven. That was about to disappear—and it represented about 20 years of Dia’s history. Allowing this work to go would have negatively impacted the integrity and identity of the institution for years to come. I knew that I would face criticism. That is one of the reasons I wanted to do it extremely publicly. I would rather face the criticism than be accused of hiding anything. At the end of the day, we saved the collection; and we created an endowment for acquisitions that will allow Dia to continue to collect artists Dia wants to collect. People are going to have little dolls to push pins into for what—five more years they will forget. And if Dia builds an incredible collection, nobody will remember. 

How did it feel being approached for this position knowing the events and issues that had ensued before your arrival?
I was intrigued—because we know how it works when an institution approaches someone for a new position. [So it was] decided that the independence of the institution was the priority, an absolute priority; that preserving the collection was an absolute priority. So when you hear and read that, you start to think of the situation. And everyone knows that the lives of institutions are punctuated with ups and downs; and that’s what it is. MoMA; the Whitney— [all] have ups and downs; and nobody said it would be easy. 

Are there any “undetonated landmines” so to speak that you didn’t know about before starting work here?
You know if there is one, we’ll make the best out of it. We’ll make it fun. [Lyn Winter, the museum’s communications director, interjects at this point: “I think they’ve all been exploded.”] 

It’s quite a vote of confidence that Maurice Marciano is putting his own museum plans on hold for a year or so while you ramp up here in your new  position. [In 2013, the Maurice and Paul Marciano Art Foundation purchased the former Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard (designed by Millard Sheets), with the intention of converting it into a private museum.] What are your thoughts about the Broad Museum going up across the street? 
I think you’re right it’s a vote of confidence. But it’s more than that. I think it demonstrates someone who understands what it means to be civic, to be a citizen; what it means to protect an institution, which is the public trust. The decision that he has taken is extremely humbling. He understands that he can do whatever he wants; but his priority has been to protect and support a public institution; and that is civic engagement. And the civic engagement is similar with the Broad Museum across the street. These collections are quite different; and there is more potential in two collections than in one. People will come to see us, and then will go to see the Broad Museum. Whether the museum across the street from you is the Met or the Pompidou—the best thing to do is to build good relationships; and to figure out what you want side by side, in parallel, in front of each other. We’re going to share the audience. It’s [about] what our museum will do for the audience. 

What is your sense of Los Angeles—as a center of contemporary art production, as a community of artists, its collectors and patrons; as a city, generally?
I’m afraid I’m going to answer you with clichés. I look at it through the lens of Mike Davis. I look at it through the lens of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. I look at it through the lens of L.A. Confidential. I look at it through the lens of the LA riots; through Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon, Liz Larner. Every cultural production coming out of LA becomes a filter for me to read the city. Mark Bradford, Kori Newkirk. I think Los Angeles is one of the rare cities where the main industry is based on creativity. You can assess: good, bad, easy, rigorous creativity, but still creativity. And if you look at the history of 20th-century art, that history is built out of the tension between two flat surfaces—the surface of the painting and the surface of the movie screen. The tension between these two surfaces created the 20th century. You cannot look at an Andy Warhol painting without thinking of the movies. You cannot look at a Marilyn icon by Warhol without thinking of her movies. You cannot think of Ed Ruscha without thinking of Hollywood. So there is this tension; and the tension comes out of what do we do with the flat surface. And then you have the presence of performance —and you can have another parallel between the stage where performance happens, entertainment happens; and the city as a stage—where you have the riots; where you have everything we know happening in the street captured. So: flat surface–flat surface; horizontal surface of the stage; horizontal surface of the city. 

Was there a particular Los Angeles artist or gallery or museum show that was especially eye-opening for you or significantly changed your perception of the art being produced in Los Angeles or the Los Angeles art scene generally? 
Yes, of course. For me, the meeting with Mike Kelley was an absolute revelation. There are many artists in Los Angeles who I absolutely love. But Mike became [not only] the quintessential Los Angeles artist, but also the quintessential American artist. His relationship to legend, to sculpture, to music, to environment, to history, to theory—for me in so many ways, he embodied what being an artist means today. There are so many [exhibitions], “Out of Actions,” “Helter Skelter.” 

Do you have a favorite book about Los Angeles? 
[Vergne holds up a large paperbound book with a vivid graphic cover: L.A. Shortcuts (subtitled “A Guidebook for Drivers Who Hate to Wait”) by Brian Roberts and Richard Schwadel, published by Red Car Press]  

Previous spread: Philippe Vergne, Photo by Peter Gregoire, courtesy MOCA