BROAD STROKES
The Broad contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles is home to 2,000 works of art, recently we opened to the public.
The Broad contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles was founded in 2015 by philanthropists Eli and Edye Broad who financed the US$140 million building. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, The Broad is home to 2,000 works of art in The Broad collection, which is one of the world’s leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, and welcomes more than 900,000 visitors a year.
The Broad contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Los Angeles recently reopened to visitors with new, free exhibitions and in-depth installations throughout its galleries. The 120,000 square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is also the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation's worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984.
The Broad makes its collection of contemporary art from the 1950s to the present accessible to the widest possible audience by presenting exhibitions and operating a lending programme to art museums and galleries worldwide.
By actively building a dynamic collection that features in-depth representations of influential contemporary artists and by advancing education and engagement through exhibitions and diverse public programming, the museum enriches, provokes, inspires, and fosters appreciation of art of our time. The museum offers free general admission and presents an active programme of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement, all within a landmark building.
The late philanthropist and entrepreneur Eli Broad, who passed away in April 2021 at the age of 87, is the only person to found two Fortune 500 companies in different industries.
“Eli saw the arts as a way to strive to build a better world for all. He was a fiercely committed civic leader, and his tenacity and advocacy for the arts indelibly changed Los Angeles. He will long be remembered for his unmatched generosity in sharing the arts passionately and widely,” notes Joanne Heyler, Founding Director of The Broad.
In 1963, the Broads moved to Los Angeles, which became their adopted hometown and the central focus of much of their philanthropy and civic activism. Since moving to the city, the Broads have played a leading role in making contemporary art and world-class architecture essential to urban life for both residents and visitors alike. Over his lifetime, Broad and his wife Edye, (who co-founded The Broad Foundations with her husband and serves on the boards for The Broad Foundations, The Broad, and The Broad Art Foundation), have donated a total of almost US$1 billion to the city's arts and culture institutions, in addition to The Broad. Their support of these institutions ushered in a transformational era for the arts in Los Angeles.
Broad led multiple efforts that have made Los Angeles into a global arts and culture capital, including co-founding two different art museums on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and The Broad; spearheading the effort to build the Walt Disney Concert Hall; and playing a catalysing role in developing the long-fallow Grand Avenue into a cultural centre drawing millions of visitors from the Los Angeles region and around the world. A tireless civic champion during his life, whose philanthropic legacy also includes education and medicine, Broad had unmatched influence and impact on the arts in Los Angeles. A 2017 profile on Broad in The New York Times noted: “It is difficult to overstate Mr. Broad's importance to Los Angeles…His contributions to the city's art and cultural world may well prove the most enduring legacy - particularly for Los Angeles's now-thriving downtown.”
It was in Los Angeles where the Broads first became interested in collecting art together. After moving to the city, Edye - whose lifelong love of art began in her childhood - began visiting L.A.'s growing constellation of galleries on her own and buying mainly works on paper. But Broad soon joined his wife in collecting art, a passion the couple shared for five decades of their 66-year marriage. “Edye was the first collector in our family, and I came along later - later being some 50 odd years ago. She was my inspiration to collect art,” said Broad. A significant early acquisition was a Vincent Van Gogh drawing acquired in 1972. By the 1980s, however, the couple had become immersed in contemporary art, believing that by collecting the art of our time, they could create a meaningful art collection and enjoy the innovations and thinking of living artists.
Within the decade, Broad, along with other arts patrons in Los Angeles, helped found and create MOCA in 1979. As the Founding Chairman of MOCA until 1984, Broad played a critical role in establishing the museum. He negotiated the purchase of 80 abstract expressionist and pop works
from Italian businessman and collector Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, who was known for being the first European collector of post-war American art and for amassing one of the world's largest and premiere collections of the genre. The 80 works that were purchased formed the core of MOCA's renowned permanent collection, giving the museum “instant credibility”, according to The New York Times. When Panza died in 2010, Broad told The New York Times: “Having his collection helped us get other works of great quality that we otherwise may not have gotten. I think because of his collection, we were not viewed as another provincial museum, but a world-class institution.”
A central goal in the Broads' philanthropy in the visual arts is public access to their collection. Their first major step in fulfilling this goal was establishing The Broad Art Foundation in 1984, a global lending library dedicated to increasing public access to contemporary art through an enterprising loan programme. The Foundation has made more than 8,700 loans from the Broads' personal collection, together with its own collection, to over 550 museums and galleries around the world.
In the mid-2000s, Broad gave a US$60 million gift to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to fund a new building dedicated to contemporary art and to support the Museum's contemporary art acquisitions as part of his vision to advance Los Angeles' reputation as a global arts capital. The three-storey Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) subsequently opened in 2008. Later that same year, Broad gave US$30 million to MOCA to rebuild its endowment and provide exhibition support when it faced a financial crisis, reinvigorating the institution.
Since the 1970s, Broad saw potential in Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles' Bunker Hill neighbourhood as a vibrant cultural centre for the Southern California region, and spent decades working to realise his vision. He told the Los Angeles Times in 2019: “A great city needs a vibrant centre where people come to enjoy cultural riches like museums, dance, opera, theatre, and the symphony, or to take part in civic life at parades and celebrations.”
In 1996, along with former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, Broad spearheaded the fundraising campaign for the roughly US$300 million required to build the Walt Disney Concert
Hall on Grand Avenue. Designed by Frank Gehry and opened in October 2003, it is the home of the acclaimed Los Angeles Philharmonic and considered an architectural masterpiece. Soon after, Broad helped to create the Grand Avenue Project, a joint initiative between the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, tasked with redeveloping certain sections of Bunker Hill. Believing that green space was a vital need in the area, Broad was able to negotiate with the city and county's chosen developer to secure funds for Grand Park, the public space between City Hall and the Music Centre. The park, today a vibrant civic space, was built without requiring any taxpayer money.
Broad was also a longtime supporter of the L.A. Opera (also located on Grand Avenue) with Edye, whose love of opera brings her to downtown Los Angeles for performances, funding a new, critically acclaimed production of Richard Wagner's ‘Ring' cycle in 2009-2010, providing operating support for the company, and endowing the director's chair.
Most significantly, Broad chose Grand Avenue for the home of the museum he co-founded with Edye, The Broad. The couple had spent nearly 50 years building one of the world's most significant collections of post-war and contemporary art, and had always wanted to bring contemporary art to the widest possible audience. In August 2010, Broad announced that they would build a new contemporary art museum to fulfil this philanthropic commitment - the first entirely new art institution to be built in Los Angeles in nearly 20 years.
The Broad opened in September 2015, revitalising and driving the area's transformation into the cultural centre that Broad had envisioned, with millions of visitors coming from across the region and around the world to enjoy the rich and lively arts and culture scene along Grand Avenue.
Broad had anticipated that the museum would attract 250,000 people a year, but the museum, in fact, defied expectations, welcoming more than 900,000 visitors in 2019 alone - three times what he had expected. Since the museum's opening, The Broad consistently attracts a strikingly young and diverse audience that reflects the demographics of the L.A. region.
Following a year-long closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Broad reopened to visitors on May 26, 2021 with new, free exhibitions and in-depth installations throughout its galleries. The museum is now welcoming visitors again with new, single-artist presentations in the skylit third floor galleries and a free, special group exhibition in the first floor galleries.
The new single artist presentations on view at museum include Jean-Michel Basquiat, with all 13 works by the artist in The Broad's collection, three of which are on view for the first time; a mini showcase of Roy Lichtenstein with nearly half the 22 works on view for the first time at the museum; 10 artworks by Kara Walker including video, works on paper, and two new acquisitions; and 26 works by Andy Warhol, including a major new acquisition.
A special exhibition entitled ‘Invisible Sun' in the first floor galleries - developed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing movement for racial justice and equity - features works in The Broad collection that resonate with our unprecedented period of disruption and our collective desire for healing and recovery.
“Experiencing art in person offers unique healing, joy, and insights that we hope can play a meaningful role in collective recovery. We cannot wait to welcome back our community to The Broad's galleries, safely, after the long and unprecedented closure of the past 14 months. The safety of our staff and visitors is our first concern and we have worked diligently to alter our protocols to enhance the experience for all, including greater amenities for a touchless visit,” notes Founding Director of The Broad Joanne Heyler. “The art that our visitors will encounter includes many works being exhibited for the first time. This includes a group of extraordinary monograph installations on the museum's third floor, and the first floor exhibition ‘Invisible Sun', a poignant meditation on art's ability to address loss while forming a foundation towards healing and understanding.”
Jean-Michel Basquiat
The Broad is presenting all 13 Jean-Michel Basquiat works in The Broad collection together for the first time, including three works on view at the museum for the first time: ‘Santo 2' (1982); ‘Deaf' (1984); and ‘Wicker' (1984). Developing a visual language from many artistic traditions - his Puerto Rican and Haitian heritage, his study of art history, and his participation in a vibrant New York graffiti scene - Basquiat's art often reflected on Black experience and history against the backdrop of many of the most pressing issues of the 1980s, including the ongoing aftermath of slavery and colonialism. Furthermore, Basquiat integrated critique of an art world that both celebrated and tokenised him. He saw his own status in this small circle of collectors, dealers, and writers connected to an American history rife with exclusion, invisibility, and paternalism, and he often used his work to directly call out these injustices and hypocrisies.
Roy Lichtenstein
A mini-survey of Roy Lichtenstein is another highlight, featuring 22 artworks, with nearly half on view at the museum for the first time, including: ‘Purist Still Life' (1975); ‘Female Figure' (1979); ‘Two Paintings: Radiator and Folded Sheets' (1984); ‘Reflections: VIP! VIP!' (1989); and ‘Nude with Pyramid' (1994). Lichtenstein drew inspiration from American mass culture, advertisements, the history of art, and, over the course of decades, his innovations came to symbolise art's collision with popular culture. From comic exaggerations of advertising to images of war, cartoon icons to consumer goods, anything and everything printed and distributed in American culture was a potential subject for Lichtenstein's painting. As a key founder of the American Pop Art movement, his subject matter aptly explored the rapid image consumption and visual culture that would come to define modernity.
Kara Walker
The Kara Walker presentation features all 10 artworks (six on view for the first time) by the artist in The Broad collection, including two new acquisitions: ‘Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions' (2004), the artist's first film, a black-and-white video that tells a tale of slavery in a fictitious past where the antebellum South is occupied by Black enslavers and white captives; and ‘The White Power ‘Gin / Machine to Harvest the Nativist Instinct for Beneficial Uses to Border Crossers Everywhere' (2019), a work on paper including a large triptych and a series of 12 small drawings in which Walker develops a narrative of a laboratory where white bodies are drained of racist thinking; their racism is harvested and repurposed as energy to benefit all oppressed people.
Andy Warhol
A Warhol showcase features 26 works including 11 works on view for the first time at The Broad, as well as a major new acquisition, ‘Liz [Early Colored Liz]' (1963), a celebrated work featuring a silkscreened image of Elizabeth Taylor, who represented both celebrity and beauty as well as tragedy for the artist. Beginning his career in the field of commercial art in the late 1940s, Warhol would come to be known for the use of celebrities in his work, including Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and Marilyn Monroe, in addition to common household objects. The Broad's Warhol installation also features works from the collection: from early drawings from the 1950s to the ‘Death and Disaster' series started in 1962 where the artist used found imagery from everyday media, to later works such as the large-scale painting ‘Camouflage' (1986).
Special Exhibition: Invisible Sun
Developed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the groundswell of demands for social justice and racial equity, ‘Invisible Sun' features works that resonate with this unprecedented period of rupture and unrest. The exhibition's title is taken from Julie Mehretu's painting ‘Invisible Sun (algorithm 8, fable form)' created in 2015. Whilst not produced in response to these specific events, the works on view speak to profound transitions both personal and global, and form an appeal for healing.
The artists included respond to issues such as the AIDS crisis, gender- and race-based violence, unchecked capitalism, and colonialism's aftermath. They collectively grapple with revolution
and change, loss, and recovery, and how the freedoms and prosperity of powerful countries come at the expense of others. The exhibition intends to be a site for reflection, education, and dialogue towards confronting current issues and offers space for contemplating a more just world.
Artists featured include El Anatsui, Alexander Calder, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Julie Mehretu, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Cindy Sherman, and many others in The Broad collection. The exhibition offers galleries focusing on the work of a single artist or thematic groupings that reflect larger webs of influence. In total, the show features 59 works in the museum's collection. 24 artworks are on view for the first time, and 16 have been acquired since the museum opened.
As a way of saying thank you and celebrating health care workers and community organisers who have worked tirelessly to keep Los Angeles safe and have served the local community and nation-atlarge, The Broad provided them with early access to visit the museum during two preview weekends.
Per state and local guidance, and to provide a safe experience for both visitors and staff, new health and safety protocols are in place, including advance online ticket reservations, reduced visitor capacity (50%) inside the museum, mandatory symptom screening
and temperature checks, and the wearing of face coverings. Additional touchless features have been installed such as ticket scanning stations and motion operated restroom facilities. During its initial reopening phase, the museum is open Wednesday through Friday from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Tickets must be reserved online in advance as onsite and standby tickets are not available.
Due to the ongoing capacity restrictions and limitations on in-person programming, The Broad will continue to engage audiences via the museum's social media and digital channels to offer talks, walkthroughs, and in-depth explorations into the museum's collection and programme. An added resource for visitors is a new text chat feature where visitors are encouraged to ask questions to museum staff through live chat on The Broad's website or via text for a safe, contactless experience. A new, expanded online mobile site is also available with access to all new content.
Current exhibitions are on view through October 3, 2021 The Broad
221 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, California
Tel: +1 213-232-6250 thebroad.org