The show closes on January 1st and tickets seem to be mostly sold out, but it’s definitely worth a look if you can manage to get in: https://www.thebroad.org/art/special-exhibitions/yayoi-kusama-infinity-mirrors
Tag: the broad
Basquiat Room @ The Broad
I thought this picture came out pretty cool from my last visit to the Broad.
– Los Angeles, CA
Another Visit to The Broad Museum – Creature
Since the museum opened in late 2015, the Broad has been regularly putting on new exhibitions and quietly rotating works on the 3rd floor walls, which contain a part of the permanent Broad Collection. Currently, an installation titled Creature is on view on the 1st floor galleries. The works presented in the show are directly from the museum’s collection, but loosely center around a theme of man and animal as physical amalgamations of fear, sex, vanity, and experiences. The theme is vague enough that the curators of the show probably a lot of fun picking out their favorite pieces for the show. Broad favorites like Takashi Murakami (@takashipom), Damien Hirst, and George Condo are well represented.
The installation is on view until Sunday, March 19th, at the Broad Museum.
– Los Angeles, CA
The Broad Opens Its Inaugural Exhibition – Part Two
Downstairs on the 1st floor of the Broad is a recent body of work by the Superflat movement leader Takashi Murakami (@takashipom). There are other works on the first floor, but it is largely dominated by the works of Murakami. The common motif in these works is the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Pacific coast of Tohoku in Japan. The emotions and devastations felt as the aftermath of the disaster overtook the livelihood of the Japanese people served as an artistic inspiration for Murakami.
A 82 ft long and 10 ft tall masterwork completed in 2014 by the artist took up two full walls of the large hall. It told a beautiful story of a mischievous sea god that caused numerous deaths and the survivors that braved through the storm on the sea finally meet prosperity and peace. However, the prosperity and peace lead to greed and gluttony that foretells another disaster soon to come. I tried to capture that story in the set of pictures after the break:
The Broad Opens Its Inaugural Exhibition- Part One
“The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. The museum is home to nearly 2,000 works of art and holds one of the most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary art worldwide” exclaim the museum’s brochures that were handed out to the attendees in bold, black, capitalized letters. Angelenos came out in droves today to finally catch a glimpse of the billion dollar collection that was promised to the city back in 2010 when Eli officially announced that the Broad (rhymes with road, not rod) museum would be opening in Downtown Los Angeles.
The “veil and vault” architecture of the museum was designed by the esteemed firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who are no strangers to designing high art institutes (for example Boston ICA, MoMA expansion, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). The vault refers to the carefully temperature and humidity controlled archive where the Broad Foundation conducts all its lending activities of its collection to outside organizations. You can catch a glimpse of the vault here.
As you might expect from a museum inaugural exhibition, they played it very safe. There’s nothing challenging, provocative, or educating about it, but plenty of familiar names and images of contemporary art are abound: Damien Hirst, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Baldessari, Julian Schnabel, Andry Warhol, Roy Lichenstein, Jeff Koon, Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, Christopher Wool, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and Kara Walker.
It is designed to draw crowds and Instagram picture tags, rather than to push the boundaries of modern art exhibition for which this opening could have been used. I don’t think the Broad needed to cater to populist tastes to draw attendance given that the Broad name carries such prominence in the art world. However, this exhibition does speak volumes about the vision and persistence of the Broad collection to recognize and build the talent of these artists before they had become household names. The Broad is a collection that continuously grows at a pace of approximately one new work per week, so I’m really excited that Eli and Edythe have decided to share it with the public in this fashion. Although this museum wasn’t built on pure philanthropy, given that museum shows will only help appreciate the value of the collection, and I couldn’t care less about the business practices of Eli Broad, this is a leading contemporary art collection that Los Angeles has been very fortunate to gain.
In Part Two, we’ll go to the exhibition area on the 1st Floor of the museum that showcases works by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
Click through to see 100+ pictures from the opening.