After days of relentless rumors, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles confirmed on Monday that it had chosen Jeffrey Deitch, a veteran commercial dealer and deal maker, to be its new director, a straddling of the gallery and museum worlds that has few precedents. Mr. Deitch, 57, will take over a highly respected 30-year-old institution that found itself teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008. Eli Broad, the billionaire collector and arts patron, bailed it out with a $30 million gift. As part of that bailout, the museum’s director, Jeremy Strick, resigned in December 2008. Mr. Broad, who was the chairman of the museum’s board at its founding, said at the time he would not play a part in the museum’s hiring of a new director, but he ended up serving on the search committee. In a brief interview on Monday, Mr. Deitch said: “I feel as if I’ve been training for this position my entire life. I’ve always considered myself part of the whole field, because I’ve worked in museums.” By the time he formally takes over the museum on June 1, he said, he will have ceased all of his commercial activities and will have closed his gallery. In announcing the selection, Mr. Broad sought to distinguish Mr. Deitch from other commercial gallery owners. “He’s hardly a dealer like Larry Gagosian,” he said, referring to the gallery owner widely considered one of the most successful in the world. “Jeffrey’s done national and international exhibitions. It was always clear he was never in it just for the money.” Mr. Broad added: “It’s time to redo the old museum model. The world has changed.”
