From the Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2001 issue

News

Art Walk

Brand New CoCA Program Director Leaves

by Emily Hall

At the Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), history is repeating itself as farce. With last week's departure of S. Daniel Fried, hired four months ago as the arts organization's program director, the position at the helm is vacant for the third time in the last year. Again, we have to ask: Why can't this 20-year-old institution hold on to its staff?

The official version of events, according to Shawn Ferris, CoCA's president of the board, is that Fried was given a four-month tryout contract that was not renewed because Fried's talents were not suited to the organization's needs. But you only have to scratch the surface of this statement to find contention brewing beneath. Ferris says Fried was, in essence, fired (other board members were unable to comment for legal reasons); Fried holds that he resigned because his job was made impossible by lack of cooperation from the board. (He's decamping for New York City next month.) And further below the surface, the story turns into utter subjective sniping, with versions of events that are impossible to verify and accusations that are bitterly personal.

The final blow, according to both sides, was a Fourth of July party at Consolidated Works, where CoCA is temporarily housed. The Board was left with no option but to cancel the event on the day it was to be held, because no one had applied for the necessary permits or licenses nor bought insurance. Fried says that members of the board offered to take care of these things and didn't. "The board said they would help," Fried says, "but they never returned my calls." Ferris says that Fried simply didn't bother to uphold the terms of the rental contract.

Fried was hired, according to Ferris, because of his enormous energy and ability to bring people together. He was a passionate advocate for CoCA, she says, but in the end, the board's original assessment of his talents "didn't prove accurate." But Jeff Galvala, who worked at CoCA as an intern 10 years ago (under the direction of Larry Reid) and volunteered under Fried, said, "Daniel [Fried] worked as hard as I've seen anyone work at that place." He acknowledged that Fried can be hard to work with. "He's aggressive, verbose, a living animated character. But be real and honest with him, and he'll put passion and energy into whatever you want to do."

The fact that Fried's personality is at the heart of this situation pinpoints two significant conflicts that CoCA must resolve in order to go forward. First, there's the tension between the organization's punk-rock past and the demands of being a now-venerable institution. (Jamie Hook suggested as much in "Death: The Next Step for CoCA?" The Stranger, October 26, 2000.) CoCA may very well long for someone like Reid, whose unorthodox curating and distinctive vision made it a prominent art venue in the early '90s, but in truth CoCA's bureaucratic setup doesn't seem flexible enough to allow one person that kind of freedom. (The board, programming committee, and program director all work together to plan exhibitions.) In planning-by-committee lies the kind of political compromise that creates middling shows and public disinterest. This leads to a second problem: Galvala suggests CoCA blossomed in the days before Seattle started trying so damn hard to be taken seriously as an arts town. In that context, Reid's from-the-hip methodology was acceptable, even admired. This original model, the one that Fried says he tried to tap, no longer applies.

CoCA, however vulnerable its position, seems undaunted. The organization is close to finalizing plans for a new space, is interviewing for a managing director (the administrative/fundraising manager), and will have added two new board members by this fall. Whether CoCA will solve its looming financial woes, or even put up some of the long-overdue shows for which funding has already been granted, remains to be seen.

emily@thestranger.com