THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA), ANNOUNCES

MOCA GALA TO BE HELD SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011

FEATURING ARTISTIC DIRECTION

BY CELEBRATED ARTIST MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

Los Angeles—The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), announced today that

its highly anticipated annual gala will be held Saturday, November 12, 2011, at MOCA Grand

Avenue. Legendary performance artist Marina Abramović will serve as the evening’s artistic

director, choreographing an unforgettable, participatory evening of performance and music,

including an appearance by a special guest musician. For the third year, gala leadership

includes MOCA Board Co-Chair Maria Arena Bell and MOCA Founding Chairman and Life

Trustee Eli Broad as gala chairs, and Larry Gagosian and Dasha Zhukova as honorary chairs.

The honorary co-chairs supporting this year’s gala comprise notable international and Los

Angeles–based art patrons and artists, including Wallis Annenberg, John Baldessari, Nicolas

Berggruen, Irving and Jackie Blum, Tim Blum, Irma and Norman Braman, Michael and Eva

Chow, Rosette Delug, Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, Mandy and Cliff Einstein, Honor Fraser

and Stavros Merjos, Gil and Janet Friesen, Berta and Frank Gehry, NancyJane and Mark

Goldston, Laurence Graff, Mark Grotjahn and Jennifer Guidi, Audrey Irmas, The Suzanne

Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation, Lilly Tartikoff Karatz and Bruce Karatz,

Maggie Kayne, Lauren and Richard King, Jeff and Justine Koons, Bettina Korek, Barbara

Kruger, Bernadette and Timothy J. Leiweke, Maurice Marciano, Nancy and Howard Marks,

Peter Morton, Eileen Harris Norton, Catherine Opie and Julie Burleigh, Laura Owens, Diana

Picasso, Jeff Poe, Carolyn and Bill Powers, Dallas Price-Van Breda and Bob Van-Breda,

Charles Ray, Shaun Caley Regen, Steven Roth and Kaayla Cevan, Ed and Danna Ruscha,

Carla and Fred Sands, Ronnie and Vidal Sassoon, Catharine and Jeffrey Soros, and Joel

Wachs.

“Marina Abramović is the most significant performance artist working today,” said MOCA

Director Jeffrey Deitch. “We are very excited that Marina will be the artistic director of

MOCA’s 2011 gala.“

In less than two years MOCA has tripled the value of its endowment, doubled its attendance,

and boosted its board membership with 21 new and returning trustees. In the same period of

time, the museum has established itself as a leader in creating a new kind of gala—introduced

in 2007 by a collaboration between Takashi Murakami and Kanye West at the © MURAKAMI

gala—as a single-evening, experiential artwork conceived by some of the most outstanding

visual artists working today. In 2009, 1,000 guests attended the MOCA New Gala, a

performance conceived by artist Francesco Vezzoli, starring Lady Gaga, and dancers from

the Bolshoi Ballet. Following the performance, a Steinway & Sons piano customized in pink

and blue butterfly motifs by celebrated artist Damien Hirst, which Lady Gaga played during

the world premiere of her song Speechless, was auctioned live, fetching $450,000 in support

of MOCA. Last year’s gala, The Artist’s Museum Happening, presented a special

collaboration with artist Doug Aitken, who envisioned an evening-long experience featuring

live performances by musicians Devendra Banhart, Beck, and Caetano Veloso. A highlight of

the evening, directed by Aitken, included the emergence of six rural farm auctioneers and

one cattle-whip performer along with the Los Angeles Gospel Choir. The Gala drew more

than 900 notable international guests and raised more than $3.2 million.

MOCA’s past galas have attracted illustrious international guests from the worlds of art,

fashion, music, and Hollywood, including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Jeff Koons, Miuccia

Prada, Dasha Zhukova, Gwen Stefani, Hedi Slimane, James Franco, Frank Gehry, Mila Kunis,

John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Chris Burden, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, David Hockney,

Takashi Murakami, Kirsten Dunst, Ginnifer Goodwin, Anthony Kiedis, Chloë Sevigny, Will

Ferrell, Gore Vidal, Vera Wang, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, and Pae White.

MOCA Gala 2011 tickets will range from $2,500 to $10,000 for individual tickets.

Table prices range from $25,000 to $100,000. Inquiries and requests can be

directed to 213/633-5348 or marina@moca.org.

This year, MOCA’s gala guests will also have the opportunity to preview the exhibition Naked

Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles, which will open to the public on November 13, 2011.

Curated by art historian Richard Meyer, this will be the first museum survey devoted to the

body of work that the tabloid photographer known as Weegee produced in Southern

California. In addition to roughly 200 photographs, most of which have never before been

shown or known, the exhibition encompasses Weegee’s related work as an author,

filmmaker, and photo-essayist. Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles is presented in

conjunction with Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions

across Southern California coming together for the first time to celebrate the birth of the L.A.

art scene.

ABOUT MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since the beginning of her

career, during the early 1970s where she attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade,

Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has been

both her subject and medium. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has

withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual

transformation. As a vital member of the generation of pioneering performance artists that

includes Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, Abramović created some of the

most historic early performance pieces and continues to make important durational works.

Abramović has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, sculpture

and Transitory Objects for Human and Non Human Use in solo exhibitions at major institutions

in the U.S. and Europe. Her work has also been included in many large-scale international

exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1976 and 1997) and Documenta VI, VII and IX,

Kassel, Germany (1977, 1982 and 1992). In 1998, three of Abramović ‘s major works, Rhythm

O (1979) and Relation in Movement (1997) and Rest Energy (1980) (by Abramović and Ulay)

were featured in MOCA’s exhibition Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object,

1949–1979. That same year, the exhibition Artist Body - Public Body toured extensively,

including stops at Kunstmuseum and Grosse Halle, Bern and La Gallera, Valencia. In 2004,

Abramović also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York and had a significant solo

show, The Star, at the Marugame Museum of Contemporary Art and the Kumamoto Museum

of Contemporary Art, Japan.

Abramović has taught and lectured extensively in Europe and America. In 1994 she became

Professor for Performance Art at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst in Braunschweig where

she taught for seven years. In 2004, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Art

Institute of Chicago, Plymouth University, UK, and Williams College, USA.

She was awarded the Golden Lion Award for Best Artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale for her

extraordinary video installation/performance piece Balkan Baroque‚ and in 2003 received the

Bessie for The House with the Ocean View‚ a 12-day performance at Sean Kelly Gallery.

In 2005, Abramović presented Balkan Erotic Epic at the Pirelli Foundation in Milan, Italy, and

at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. That same year, she held a series of performances called

Seven Easy Pieces at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was honored for Seven Easy

Pieces by the Guggenheim, at their International Gala in 2006, and by the AICA USA with the

Best Exhibition of Time Based Art award in 2007. Abramović's work is included in numerous

major public and private collections worldwide. She was the subject of a major retrospective

at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Artist is Present, in 2010. Forthcoming in

2011, Abramović will be the subject of a major retrospective at the Garage Center for

Contemporary Culture in Moscow. She starred in a play, The Life and Death of Marina

Abramović, which is a re-imagination of Abramović's biography, at the Manchester

International Festival in July. Marina Abramović lives and works in New York.

IMAGE: Marina Abramović performing Entering the Other Side (2005) at the Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum, New York on November 15, 2005, photo by Kathryn Carr, © The

Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

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