LOS ANGELES—A year ago the charismatic Michael Govan, 43, ended his 12-year tenure as director of the Dia Foundation—where his signature achievement was a new space for its permanent collection, in Beacon, New York—to run the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. No doubt billionaire collector Eli Broad, who is giving $60 million for the Broad Contemporary Museum at LACMA (opening next year), had a hand in the hire. Govan tells Sarah Douglas about LACMA’s expansion plan—Renzo Piano’s three-phase, $300 million brainchild—and why he didn’t get Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

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The Los Angeles Times said that working with Eli Broad, whom it called “a demanding Medici,” would be your greatest challenge. True?

He is seen as a tough businessman who usually wins. I’ve known Eli for 18 years, and we’ve always had a cordial relationship. I’ve never had a negative experience.

Broad said that more has been accomplished at the museum in the past seven months than in the past decade. What exactly is he referring to?

I’m big on doing things, not talking about them. I’ve been working on the expansion. It’s a beautiful structure with 160,000 square feet of exhibition space. Try that in New York!

How will LACMA reach out to L.A.’s young artists?

By having a contemporary attitude. The concept of the encyclopedic museum hasn’t been updated in 200 years. I took a big risk by having John Baldessari help design our Magritte show. But it worked out perfectly.

So you can be both be encyclopedic and have a contemporary attitude?

We can reshape history. You walk into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and you have Greece and Rome on your left and Egypt on your right. We can tell a different story. Imagine that you walk into LACMA and the first thing you see is Pre-Columbian art.

A year before your arrival, the museum was criticized for mounting the King Tut show. Do you agree with the criticism?

It’s not the kind of show I will do. It doesn’t build the reputation and seriousness you need in the long run.

Last spring LACMA exhibited the group of Klimt paintings that was looted from the Bloch-Bauer family during World War II. Didn’t people want the museum to buy Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which Ronald Lauder got for $135 million?

I didn’t go to a cocktail party where it wasn’t discussed. The museum has never acquired anything for more than $8 million before. We need to walk before we can run. I did come up with a large amount of money, but it was nothing compared to what the family achieved.

There’s always talk about the entertainment industry’s untapped potential as museum benefactors. Is that true?

We just added [Yahoo! CEO] Terry Semel and author Michael Crichton to our board. When the Klimt painting came up and it was clear we weren’t going to pull $150 million out of a hat, I said to the board, ‘You can’t tell me L.A. isn’t as interesting as Secession Vienna was. It’s bursting with ideas.’ The moral of the story is, invest in your own time. In 100 years you’ll have a masterpiece.

There’s a lot of talk lately about L.A. being the art hot spot. Do you agree?

Yes, but you have to be realistic. Think of New York in the 1960s and ’70s, when a large part of the market was still in Europe, yet the art was being made in New York. Now the market is in New York. The galleries in L.A. today are like those that existed in New York then. Other than Larry Gagosian, you don’t see these massive moneymakers.

How do the two cities’ scenes feel different?

You can still find gallery space in L.A. for a few dollars a square foot. I go to shows in garages. The environment is incredibly creative and not yet dominated by money. But put a big underline under yet.

You have a five-year contract with LACMA?

Yes. A New Yorker lost in L.A. for five years. Or maybe they won’t want me for even five years, if, as in the Magritte show, I keep putting clouds on the floor and highways on the ceiling.

“A Conversation with Michael Govan” was originally published in the March 2007 issue of Art + Auction magazine.