Richard Hamilton MoCA retrospective cancelled

A Richard Hamilton retrospective is the first high profile casualty of the current travails affecting The Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles. The museum has pulled out of staging a retrospective of the pop artist's career following the abrupt departure of long-standing chief curator, Paul Schimmel in June. Schimmel, the co-curator of the show, has confirmed that he will “continue to be involved with the exhibition”, which he is co-organising with Vicente Todoli, former director of London’s Tate Modern. The show is due to open in London in spring 2014. Earlier it was reported that Fire in the Disco, a MoCA show looking at the history of disco and its impact on art, fashion and music and co-curated with James Murphy from LCD Sound System might also be in the balance following Schimmel's departure. A separate exhibition of Hamilton’s late works takes place at the National Gallery in London (10 October-13 January 2013). It will include three large-scale studies for what was to have been his last painting, The Unknown Masterpiece, which Hamilton, who died last September never finished.