In 2008, LA MOCA—which has a terrific collection, and used to be intellectually superpowered, too—announced that despite its strengths, it was in serious financial trouble. Art-collecting tycoon Eli Broad bailed it out, with strings attached, only to announce less than two years later that he would build his own museum across the street. In the meantime, New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch was hired as LA MOCA's new director, controversially because he came from the commercial world and had never worked for museums.

Whither LA MOCA? everybody asked. Corporate takeover? Or more complicated institutional shakeup?

Well, now it has been announced that Paul Schimmel, the curator whose name became synonymous with LA MOCA, has been fired. (The news was first reported on Coagula by Mat Gleason, who says he expects Schimmel to land at the Mike Kelley Foundation. The last show I saw by Schimmel, last year's Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981, was ponderous and sprawling. When somebody said to me that the show made it seem like Schimmel was in a profoundly bad mood, it was hard not to agree.) And Schimmel's departure comes on the heels of several others, the Los Angeles Times reports.

What's going on in there?

"From where I sit, the whole thing stinks," writes New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz, who says Deitch is "probably just a pawn in Broad's game, someone to do his bidding, and that he'll eventually be gone, leaving total control in the hands of Broad and a board that he's hand-picked." (That outcome didn't seem so obvious looking back at Saltz's opinion when the hire was made, though.)

Saltz continues:

Despite solid attendance numbers, MoCA seems to be in the state the Guggenheim entered in the early 2000s, under its megalomaniacal director, Thomas Krens. MoCA is becoming a tourist attraction for one-shot visitors, a rogue institution stripped of the reputation won for it by generations of artists. Schimmel's leave-taking confirms what was already known: The institution is being damaged, enough to suggest that MoCA may no longer be a genuine member of the artistic and creative community of Los Angeles.

CultureGrrl points to a report by (the late) Artnet's Rachel Corbett that Deitch is fed up with the nonprofit business, as opposed to the gallery game, where you can sell off art to fund whatever you want.

CultureGrrl quotes Corbett but adds her own thoughts in brackets:

When Deitch needed cash at his former gallery, Deitch Projects, he'd simply ask clients to buy a work in advance to support the cost of fabrication. But while a gallery can make its money back, a museum often takes on a deficit. As an example, Deitch cited the Theaster Gates solo show, "An Epitaph for Civil Rights," which was held at the museum in 2011, and for which Deitch raised only about $15,000 in advance. Yet when Chicago's Kavi Gupta Gallery mounted the exhibition, it sold everything and earned around $500,000, by Deitch's estimate. [In other words, it appears that MOCA mounted a highly problematic presale exhibition.]

But Deitch reserved his strongest criticism for the new class of wealthy private institutions that now compete with museums for acquisitions. These megacollectors pose a bigger threat to LA MOCA than do even the top galleries, many of which are known for producing museum-quality shows, he said.

"The challenge is how to connect with a big audience when people only sell to multimillionaires who have private foundations and the ability to display the work beautifully," Deitch said.

Is Deitch trying to take on his LA maker? Aren't they on the same side? So far, nobody is saying much.