The new art center was announced at MCLA’s Opening Breakfast for the spring semester Tuesday.
“Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld, a California artist and poet, discovered MCLA as a place with a mission that she supports and values. More recently, Carolyn's representatives visited campus and met with faculty, staff, trustees, and community members about how MCLA can further contribute to the creative economy, expand on our successful arts and arts management program, and develop new programs around creativity," said college president Dr. Jamie Birge. “These conversations led to an agreement with Carolyn to fund the construction of a new facility on the corner of Porter and Church Streets, and to provide three years of operating costs for that facility. This morning, I'm happy to announce that construction and development of the Campagna Kleefeld Center for Creativity in the Arts will begin immediately.”
The London-born Kleefeld is the daughter of real estate developer, financier, and philanthropist Mark Taper. In 1962, he made a donation to the Los Angeles Music Center that led to the Mark Taper Forum being named in his honor.
“We will be able to bring to campus many different kinds of art from numerous artists, so that we can learn about the inspiration of artists, their motivations, and why each of us appreciates art differently," Birge continued. "Valuing these the aesthetic of art isn't just appreciation for the work itself, but rather how an arts management major, for example, learns how to curate, discern, and share artwork that might be controversial or provocative or a different form of art. Carolyn's real gift to MCLA is the inspiration to be creative, to have a space where we can wrestle with the definitions of what art is and how creativity is a form of expression of who we are and how we value one another.”
Birge says plans for the facility and its programming are still being developed, but shared a few details.
“The new facility will be located where 94 and 100 Porter Street houses now stand, and those faculty will be relocated on campus," said the president. "We anticipate construction to work to begin sometime in fall of 2025. We will host a public information session on January 30th for our neighbors to share information about the construction timeline and the project itself. The facility will house MOSAIC and programs and activities associated with 49 and 51 Main Street. The center will have a gallery for a rotating collection of Carolyn's art, as well as other artists, including students. The center will be a teaching lab for all students, regardless of major, to explore, create and learn about art and its expression.”
It’s not the first time Kleefeld has used a large donation to enshrine her art and name on a college campus. In 2019, her $10 million gift to California State University, Long Beach saw the college’s art museum expanded and renamed the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum. Around 180 pieces of her own work were added to its permanent collection. In a blistering LA Times article upon the facility’s reopening in 2022, art critic Christopher Knight called the situation “a train wreck” and “a serious disservice… to students,” describing Kleefeld’s work as “terrible” and “by far the worst I’ve seen on display in a serious exhibition venue, public or private, for profit or nonprofit, in years.”
Birge told WAMC he’s familiar with the criticism.
“I think the real benefit of the center is that it's a lab, it's an art lab," he said. "That's the language we're using it using for it. And we want our students to explore and experiment and discover all different kinds of art. Whether I think it's a valuable art piece, or you think it's a valuable art piece, or the artist thinks it's a valuable art piece is what we want to explore and why those things are valuable. Our students who are arts management students have responsibility, ultimately, for curating artwork in a variety of different places, and so, how do they capture the artist's motivation? How do they help the public see that art in the lens that the artist has?”
He said the “very unfortunate” LA Times article actually offers MCLA a benefit.
“This positions the role that we have here – and it's a very different project here than it was at Long Beach – but it positions our students to be able to engage the difficult questions sometimes about artwork, as I said, provocative or controversial or different kinds of art," Birge told WAMC. "But that's what we want our students doing. We want them to have the opportunity to wrestle with those things. We like to do it here in a lab, in a controlled environment, before they get out into MASS MoCA or the Clark or the Berkshire Museum, where they have to manage those things. Where better to learn about that than at MCLA? And so, this art that Carolyn will be rotating for us, as well as other artists, gives our students the opportunity to experiment with those kinds of things.”
As recently as December 2024, criticism over the Long Beach State donation has continued in the Southern California community. Students told the Long Beach Current that “it’s embarrassing to be a student at a school that seems to care more about money than the artistic brilliance of the faculty and students,” and that “It leaves fewer opportunities for students, and it makes the art program look like a joke.”
At Kleefeld’s request, MCLA is not sharing the size of her donation to the college. Kleefeld did not attend Tuesday’s announcement.