Jeffrey Deitch

Since 1975, Jeffrey Deitch has been curating exhibition internationally. Among his most celebrated projects are Lives (1975),[14] Born in Boston (1979),[15] New Portrait (1984) at Moma PS1,[16] and Form Follows Fiction (2001) at Castello di Rivoli, Turin.[17] Between 1988 and 1992, Deitch curated several shows at Deste Foundation, Athens. Among them, Cultural Geometry (1988),[18] Psychological Abstraction (1989),[19] Artificial Nature (1990),[20] and Post Human (1992).[21] He also served as one of the curators of the Venice Biennale's Aperto section in 1993.[22]

In 1980, he became a regular columnist of Flash Art and the first U.S. editor of Flash Art International. The same year he wrote the first ever press mention of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was published in Art in America.[23] His writings have appeared on numerous international magazines: Art in America, Artforum, Garage, Interview Magazine, Kaleidoscope, Paper Magazine, and Purple Magazine.

In 1996 Deitch opened the Deitch Projects gallery in the Soho section of New York City. His first shows included works by Vanessa Beecroft, Jocelyn Taylor, Nari Ward, and Mariko Mori.[24] Soon after, he bought the building housing Canal Lumber, a bigger space around the corner on Wooster Street. The first major exhibition project there was of a Barbara Kruger video-and-slide-projection show in the fall of 1997.[5]

An early advocate of graffiti art in the 1980s, he later introduced New York to the style of street art which had originated in San Francisco in the 1990s among artists on the fringe of the skateboard scene.[25] Deitch became well known as a supporter of young artists like Kehinde Wiley and Cecily Brown, while also representing the work of more established artists like Keith Haring and Jeff Koons (Deitch threw Koons' 50th birthday party).[26] In 2006, he bought Bridget Riley's Untitled (Diagonal Curve) (1966), at Sotheby's for $2.1 million, nearly three times its $730,000 high estimate and also a record for the artist.[27] In 2009, he wrote the strategic plan for the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.[28]

In 2014, Deitch published Live the Art on the 15-years history of Deitch Projects.[29][30]

In 2010 Jeffery Deitch was appointed Director to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).[31] Deitch closed closed Deitch Projects and also resigned from the authentication committee of the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat; he was a close friend of the artist.[4] During his three-years tenure, Deitch advised and curated seminal exhibitions such as The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Warhol (2012)[32] and Art in the Streets (2011), the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art.[33] Additionally, Deitch conceived MOCAtv, the first original YouTube channel dedicated to fine art.[34]

There was controversy about Deitch's tenure at MOCA. In 2012 Deitch fired MOCA's longtime chief curator Paul Schimmel, leading to the resignation of four MOCA board members – artists John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, and Catherine Opie – in protest.[35] As of 2015 Deitch lived in an 8,000-square-foot house in Los Feliz, Los Angeles formerly owned by Cary Grant.[36]

In 2015, Deitch began hosting shows at 76 Grand Street in New York, one of his former gallery spaces. In July 2016, he reopened his Lower Manhattan gallery at 18 Wooster Street, the space he ran from 1996 to 2010 and rented out to the Swiss Institute for the following five years.[37] Deitch now runs the two spaces under Jeffrey Deitch Inc. Since reopening the gallery, Jeffrey Deitch has organized exhibitions by Tom Sachs, Eddie Peake, Walter Robinson, Ai Weiwei, Kenny Scharf, and Austin Lee, among others.[38]

In 2018, he opened a new 15,000 square feet (1,400 square metres) space in Hollywood, designed by Frank Gehry, specifically to mount what he described as “museum-level” exhibitions.[39] The gallery inaugurated with a solo exhibition of Ai Weiwei, followed by Urs Fischer, and Judy Chicago.[40]

In 2019 Deitch edited Unrealism, a publication on new figurative painting featuring the most groundbreaking contemporary artists and their important predecessors.[41]

In 2020, Jeffrey Deitch conceived the creation of the Gallery Association Los Angeles (GALA for short), to "generate excitement about the L.A. gallery scene” and shared his idea with a group of gallerists in Los Angeles.[42] In May 2020, GALA launched galleryplatform.la, an online platform that serves the dynamic Los Angeles art community with editorial content and rotating online viewing rooms.[43]