Museum of Ice Cream More Enduring than the Marciano

Marciano Art Foundation (closed)
It's looking more and more like the Marciano Art Foundation's closure may be permanent. The MAF opened May 5, 2017 and closed Nov. 6, 2019, a run of 30 months. In comparison New York's ill-fated Gallery of Modern Art, founded by supermarket heir Huntington Hartford, lasted 5 years (1964-1969). The only real parallels to the MAF's longevity are so-called pop-up museums. The San Francisco venue of the Museum of Ice Cream opened Sep. 2017 and is still in operation, a run of 26 months. If the latter stays open through March 2020, while the Marciano remains closed, an actual pop-up museum will have been around longer than the MAF.

In Sep. 2018 a Museum of Ice Cream spokesperson said the San Francisco attraction "will continue to keep its doors open indefinitely, due to the extremely favorable public reception."
Museum of Ice Cream (still open)

Comments

Luce said…
So yes the Marciano Museum of contemporary art has closed - stated as due to lack of attendance and public interest.

What are the Las Vegas odds that the new George Lucas Museum of Narrative art with its Norman Rockwell paintings is second only to the Getty in attendance for LA and will be a LA major tourist attraction? So unwoke - to appreciate the precepts, the values of the art in the Lucas museum...
Anonymous said…
The Marcianos probably didn't do enough of a business plan for their non-profit and underestimated how much it would cost to run it. An overly fast depletion of their liquidity, staffers demanding higher wages and finally tepid attendance may have convinced them it was no longer worth it.

In the meantime, I notice the Broad doesn't have any future special exhibitions listed on their schedule. Not totally sure if that's a first. Don't recall if they've always had something jotted down on their calendar.

I recall during the great recession of 2008-2009, the Getty saw a huge decrease in its investment portfolio.

Storm clouds gathering on the horizon?

Finally, there's the major publicly run museum in LA and its director in the process of destroying it. That certainly is a big storm cloud looming up ahead.