Is Art Center Gehry-Rigged? Richard Koshalek Says No

And some suggest that this is nothing new. Long before Nate Young’s resignation, Art Center saw its share of high-profile yet strangely hush-hush departures. CFO Glenn Baker left Art Center after only five months on the job, and Young’s predecessor, Ron Jones, resigned under similarly strange circumstances. Baker refused comment and neither Jones nor Young responded to e-mail queries.

Richard Koshalek rode into his presidency at Art Center on a wave of good press. Hailed as a fund-raising genius for his work at MOCA, which he almost single-handedly built during his 20-year tenure as the museum’s director, the WallStreet Journal and the New York Times both wrote stories trumpeting his arrival.

Courtesy Art Center

Richard Koshalek

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• Nathan Cooke
• Richard Koshalek
• Courtesy Art Center
• Nate Young
• Visual Arts

It was a pivotal turning point for the college — Koshalek was charged with bringing Art Center into the 21st century, from a design school with a sterling insider reputation to a global brand name. He vowed to accomplish this by revamping the educational system and put Art Center on the forefront of the sustainability movement — carving out new roles for design in dealing with the world’s problems. Newsweek praised his vision of “raising the consciousness of the next generation of designers.”

But while media buzz swirled around Art Center’s green, new vision, such monumental change naturally invited dissent. Digital-design pioneer and Art Center alumni Clement Mok was on the Board of Trustees during the Koshalek’s transition period. “We brought Richard in to fund-raise. Design was changing, and there was a definite need to evolve. Lecture style wasn’t working anymore, and we needed to retrofit our class space to accommodate a studio style of work.”

Shortly after Koshalek took over, however, talk of capital improvements and educational reform suddenly morphed into a the case for the new Gehry building. “Things got out of hand,” says Mok, and much to his dismay, a massive fund-raising plan was implemented and a 2005 target date was set for the groundbreaking.

“I asked Richard, ‘What is the educational value of this structure? What are we going to put in there?’ I never got a reasonable answer. Art Center used to be a school for Jedi knights. Under Richard, it aspires to be a cultural institution competing with the likes of MOCA and the Getty.”

Koshalek rejects the criticism from Mok — who left the Board of Trustees in 2002 and hasn’t been active at Art Center since — as sour grapes. But Mok isn’t the only prominent Art Center figure making these critiques.

“I always thought the building was a kind of fetish,” says artist Mike Kelley, who taught at Art Center for more than a decade before moving on in 2005. “If all the fund-raising efforts for the building went toward scholarships, we’d be much better off now.

“I’m no fool,” he adds, “I know people will give money for a building that they won’t give for scholarships, but it’s still disappointing because I lobbied for Koshalek to be brought in.”

Kelley says Koshalek’s approach reflects a larger trend in the museum world, of institutions staking their future on a signature building, often at the expense of their programming.

Koshalek denies the museum comparison: “We have to educate people for jobs that don’t yet exist,” he says. “We have to train them for a future that is constantly changing, and we need the facilities to be able do that.”

Many agree with Koshalek. A separate petition launched in favor of the Gehry building is slowly gaining signees. But with so much at stake, given the current economic climate, many on campus openly wonder, despite his reputation as a master builder, whether Koshalek is the right person to oversee the construction of these facilities. Ramone Muñoz, who has taught at Art Center for more than 25 years and attended the school in 1968, reflects what he says is a significant faculty concern. “Richard is one of the foremost advocates of great architecture in the world. No one questions his sincerity that he thinks this building is what’s best for Art Center. But one of the problems is that Richard’s past projects on campus don’t have a great historical track record.”

Muñoz, a moderate voice by most accounts, says Koshalek’s two largest projects since coming to Art Center — the Sinclair Pavilion student center and the new South Campus, a retrofitted airplane-testing facility — have, at best, been mixed bags. “These buildings are sensational pieces of sculpture, but there are serious questions as to their functionality. If every structure had been an unqualified success, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with the Gehry building.”

Administration officials admit the South Campus has acoustic problems and is running at roughly 50 percent capacity. As for the Sinclair Pavilion: “It’s true, students hate it,” says Patricia Oliver, Senior Vice President of Educational Planning and Architecture.