BROAD STROKES
New Los Angeles art space leverages social media and draws in millennials
LOS ANGELES— It’s midday, and a line of people crowd a sidewalk in downtown L.A. The gathered crowd scrolls on their smartphones, sporting an assortment of Ray-Ban sunglasses, ironic beards and artful tattoos.
The line isn’t for the launch of a new food truck or limited-edition vinyl release, but rather, for the newly opened Broad Museum.
Inside, Antoine Girard stands in a room of Roy Lichtenstein posters in black skinny jeans, sneakers and T-shirt, smiling at visitors. Girard is one of the Broad’s visitor services associates, an army of cheery, millennial staff, armed with varying arts degrees and a passion for modern art.
The Broad regularly profiles new pieces and staff favourites on the app Snapchat, and Girard had recently been featured, chatting about Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Horn Players painting now on display at the museum.
“It was really fun — I love to talk about Basquiat whenever,” the art history major says, smiling. “I saw a guest today with a Basquiat T-shirt and we ended up having this big conversation about him and his work.” The guest recognized Girard from Snapchat, he admits bashfully.
This accessibility and social media-friendly attitude is the charm of the Broad, and is likely why the museum has had months-long waiting times since it opened in September 2015. At the Broad, visitors are encouraged to unpretentiously engage with the art, whether it’s through a friendly conversation, Snapchat or Instagram.
The museum is home to the private collection of Californian philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, whose love for contemporary and modern art led them to amass a private collection of more than 2,000 pieces created predominantly between 1950 and the 1990s. Their collection continues to grow by an average of one piece per week, and they continue to lend their pieces to museums all over the world via the Broad Art Foundation, established in 1984.
Once we get through the morning line, we take the escalator up through a long cave-like tunnel. At the top, an enormous bouquet of what looks like half blown-up balloon animals sits in the middle of an airy open space bathed in diffused natural light, a selfie-taker’s dream.
A young woman in a long floral skirt, Converse sneakers and her hair tied in a top knot asks one of the staff to take a photo of her with the balloon piece, Jeff Koons’ Tulips installation. Everywhere people are happily snapping photos with their phones, chatting away with friends. This is hardly one of the quiet, stuffy museums of yesteryear.
“I’ve never seen so many people interact with a Koons piece,” Girard says excitedly when asked about the social-media culture at the museum. “I think this place is going to rejuvenate art in a different way, the collection is going to keep changing, so hopefully the buzz will keep growing, and lots of different people can learn about the art.”
Even the design of the physical building lends itself to the spirit of participation and interaction. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the building exterior is a porous cube shape, playing off the smooth and organic lines of the Walt Disney Concert Hall next door. The building also houses a 21,000-square foot vault for the entire Broad collection, which guests can peek into through various glass panels throughout the museum, along with its 50,000 square feet of gallery space. But it wasn’t the details of the vast collection or the architecture that made 23-year-old Brian Mendoza, an accountant from L.A., order his tickets to the museum four months in advance. It was his Instagram account.
“I’ve actually seen all of these pieces on Instagram and Snapchat before I came myself,” Mendoza says, swiping through the photos on his phone, trying to choose the perfect snap to share. “I’d been wanting to see them because everyone on my feed kept posting photos.”
The flurry of social posts of visits to the Broad has been bolstered by celebrities such as pop star Katy Perry and reality-TV star Kourtney Kardashian posting selfies from their own visits to the museum’s Infinity Mirrored Room installation, a piece by Yayoi Kusama, where guests stand alone in a dark mirrored room on what feels like a floating platform, among a cluster of LED stars.
British songstress Adele filmed a recent performance for the Brit Awards in the same place, with a sneak peek on Instagram earning her more than 690,000 likes.
We attempted to visit the Infinity Mirrored Room on our visit, but the wait was more than four hours.
“I’ve never seen this many people my age coming to a museum enthusiastically,” Girard says, and laughs. “We’re definitely bringing art to the people.” Lauren Miller was hosted by Visit California and its partners, which didn’t review or approve this story.