The Broad art museum opens in Downtown Los Angeles
A sparkling new art museum, The Broad, housing the private collection of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, 82, and his wife Edythe, opens this Sunday, September 20, in downtown Los Angeles. The giant white honeycombed building on Grand Avenue, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, stands next to the silver sails of the Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry, completed in 2003, and across the street from MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, the elegant red and green structure by Arata Isozaki, built in 1986.
Today I visited the opening exhibition of 250 works by 60 artists. I took the cylindrical glass elevator to the third floor gallery, where light comes through the honeycombed ceiling and walls, and I was impressed by the depth and scope of this art collection, spanning five decades from the 1950s to the present.
I revisited favorite artists such as Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichtenstein, and made several new discoveries. I photographed two of the most amusing pieces.
Under the Table by Robert Therrien, 1994. The 10-feet tall table and chairs installation was inspired by Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Death of Marxism, Women of All Lands Unite, a 2013 tapestry by Polish artist Goshka Macuga, is a collage of Black and White photographs, depicting naked women around Carl Marx’s grave. Two live women in painted body suits were reading books and talking on the art work.
Admission is free and the Broad is open 6 days a week except Mondays, so go visit and make your own discoveries. But beware of traffic and street closures—better to take the Metro than driving.
For more info about the architecture of the building, read our February 2015 article, First Night at the Broad.