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The fact that LACMA has made a new wing for modern and contemporary art its main sign of growth suggests that it falls in direct competition with MOCA. But LACMA's director, Earl ("Rusty") Powell III, brushes this aside. Robert Anderson, he points out, urged Arco to give $1 million to MOCA as well as $3.6 million to LACMA. And in any case, LACMA's master plan for expansion was mostly drawn up before the 1980 announcement of MOCA's founding. "The record has already proved that we haven't detracted from each other in the search for funds," says Powell. Few doubt that Los Angeles can manage to support two museums of modern and contemporary art, and Powell dismisses the idea that LACMA and MOCA will end up cutting each other's throats. "Will the Met's new wing of modern art detract from the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney or the Guggenheim?" he asks. "No -- it just creates a more fertile environment." So it will, and the indications are that Los Angeles is the place where the old reflexive assumptions about the provincialism of the rest of America vis- a-vis New York are fated to be broken down at last. But not tomorrow.