Ten years ago, a new destination emerged in downtown L.A., bringing yet another architectural spectacle to Grand Avenue and bolstering the city’s art offerings. The Broad, home to the vast art collection of Eli and Edythe Broad, aimed to deliver world-class art to the masses for free.
Originally set to debut in late 2014 (but delayed due to complications with the construction of the stark white facade known as “the veil”), the 120,000-square-foot museum opened Sept. 20, 2015. Public demand was so high it temporarily crashed the Broad’s online ticketing system.
Since then, an estimated 6.7 million visitors have made their way inside to take in contemporary art by boldface names, among them Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker and Mark Bradford. Special exhibitions by the likes of Jeffrey Gibson and Shirin Neshat, as well as an eclectic slate of concerts, film screenings and artist talks, have helped sustain the buzz among tourists and locals alike.
But the first decade hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbow-colored Jeff Koons sculptures. Early on, critics panned the building’s unconventional design, calling it everything from “tight” and “unadventurous” to a “supersized cheese grater.” There’s been fuss about long lines and special exhibition pricing. When the pandemic hit, the museum was forced to shutter for 14 months and laid off 130 employees. Most recently, two former staffers sued the Broad for alleged discrimination, which the museum denies.
Despite the critiques and setbacks, folks have continued to flock to Bunker Hill to take an otherworldly escalator ride and fill their social media feeds with images of Robert Therrien’s 10-foot table sculpture.
To mark the Broad’s 10th anniversary, here are nine moments that stand out over the decade and one major development on the horizon.
Lights, camera, Kusama
Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room — the Souls of Millions of Light Years Away,” the installation that launched seemingly infinite Instagram posts, has kept millions of reservation-holding museumgoers lining up outside its first-floor chamber since the museum opened. Several hundred people per day wait for their chance to snap its constellation of LED lights that bounce off of wall-to-wall mirrors and the shallow layer of water surrounding the viewing platform.
The special exhibitions begin
In June 2016, the museum debuted its first special exhibition, “Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life,” which featured 120 self-portraits pulled from the Broad’s collection, the world’s largest holdings of Sherman’s photographic oeuvre. Spanning four decades, the exhibition displayed the artist’s transformation into myriad identities — from cinematic femme fatale to Rococo coquette — in full-color wall murals and framed black-and-white vignettes, as well as the 1997 feature film she directed, “Office Killer.”
This marked the first time the museum charged an entry fee — $12 for adults to view this show.
A grand makeover
Timed to the citywide Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA event in 2017, the museum commissioned Carlos Cruz-Diez to create an outdoor installation — part of his “Couleur Additive” series — that livened up the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street with swaths of green, orange and blue. The Venezuelan artist teamed up with high school students from Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual & Performing Arts to paint four crosswalks that brought much-needed color to the corridor.
On view until it organically faded, the public artwork phenomenon tempted fearless pedestrians to throw caution to the wind as they raced out between traffic light cycles, and dodged aggressive drivers, in an attempt to capture the perfect selfie framed by the zigzagging optical art stripes.
An American icon in focus
“Something Resembling Truth,” a survey of artist Jasper Johns put together in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts in London, brought his paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings together for a 2018 exhibition that was praised as “blissful.” Well-known works such as “Target” (1961) and his American flag and crosshatch paintings hung as a tribute to the living legend, whose works have been a part of the Broad’s collection since 1978.
Say it loud …
“Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power 1963-1983” celebrated more than 60 groundbreaking Black artists whose works embraced the beauty of African American culture while holding a mirror up to the civil rights injustices plaguing the country. This 2019 exhibition shined a light on the likes of Betye Saar, Noah Purifoy, Charles White and David Hammons, as well as art hubs across the country that once fostered Black creatives, including photographer Roy DeCarava and his seminal Kamoinge Workshop in New York City, Chicago’s AFRICOBRA collective and L.A.’s Brockman Gallery.
The only West Coast appearance of the touring exhibition opened with a celeb-studded bash attended by Angela Bassett, Tina Knowles and Debbie Allen. The show included pieces on loan from the private collections of such tastemakers as Spike Lee, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. The Broad tapped Quincy Jones to curate an evening of live musical performances, as well as a soundtrack inspired by the exhibition.
Farewell to an L.A. arts philanthropist
On April 30, 2021, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad died in Los Angeles. The real estate and insurance magnate started collecting art in the early 1970s alongside his wife, Edythe. The couple went on to amass more than 2,000 artworks, including pieces by Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. They established the Broad Art Foundation in 1984, which loaned artworks to institutions around the world.
Broad, who retired from public life in 2017, left an indelible mark on the local art scene. He was a founding chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art, invested in the creation of both an art center at UCLA and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and was a benefactor to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Mr. DOB and his AR friends
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and his mouse-eared cartoonish alter ego, Mr. DOB, landed in 2022 with a parade of trippy mushroom sculptures covered in anime eyes and an 82-foot-long painting marrying traditional Taoism with modern-day manga. The immersive “Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow” exhibit featured augmented reality experiences that let visitors use smartphones to bring new “life” to the vibrant, gory, goofy and grand pieces surrounding them. If you angled the Instagram app just so you’d glimpse a miniature metallic silver version of the artist greeting you, a comically muscly folklore demon towering behind you, or a pair of futuristic-looking avatars flanking paintings as though they were standing beside you IRL.
A Pop art explosion
For the first time in L.A., a major exhibition of works by Keith Haring made its debut, filling 10 of the museum’s galleries with a lifetime’s worth of his signature bold black lines and electrifying hues. “Art Is for Everybody” transported guests from 2023 DTLA to 1980s downtown NYC. The collection of more than 120 items included subway drawings, throwback photos, vintage videos, activist posters drawing attention to causes of the time (including apartheid and AIDS awareness), as well as a re-creation of Haring’s Soho boutique, the Pop Shop. It was estimated to have attracted larger crowds than any other Broad exhibition — more than 170,000 visitors.
Love letter to Black women
In May 2024, the Broad kicked off the first major international tour of “Mickalene Thomas: All About Love,” an exhibition devoted to Black women. Thomas represented her muses in poses that were dignified, glamorous, sensuous and exuberant, employing everything from acrylic paint to glitter and rhinestones to neon lights. Notably, the exhibition entrance replicated the artist’s childhood home in New Jersey and the first room swapped basic white gallery walls for two full-scale retro living room installations, all of which spoke to the importance of Black women having comforting safe spaces.
Throughout the show, there were areas in which to lounge, reminisce, learn and rejoice. And a public programming lineup tied to the exhibition included self-care workshops, live music by Black femme musicians, plus a diverse showcase of queer stand-up comedians.
An expansion in the works
In April, the Broad held a groundbreaking ceremony for its forthcoming building expansion, which is expected to add 50,000 square feet to the museum, providing 70% more gallery space. With an entrance facing Hope Street, the smooth concrete addition will open out to the Grand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill Metro station.
Set to open in 2028 ahead of the Summer Olympic Games, the new design — drawn up by the building’s original architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro — comes with a $100 million price tag and will include new galleries, top-floor outdoor courtyards and live performance spaces. The renovations will also afford guests a chance to access “the vault,” the second-floor art storage space that has thus far only been visible through stairwell windows.
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