Vergne succeeds Jeffrey Deitch, appointed in 2010, whose background
as an
art dealer, without museum experience, made him a controversial
choice, and resulted in artists John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Catherine Opie and Ed Ruscha resigning from MOCA's board in 2012,
as a criticism of Deitch's policies.
[16]
As he explained in a 2009 interview with Cleveland, Ohio's The Plain
Dealer newspaper, he made a
choice in 1967 to make
art hard for himself and force a personal artistic breakthrough by abandoning the paintbrush.