Discoveries: A Star is Born
May 2008
To take away a street from a city known for its traffic jams is an amazing feat. To remove a parking lot is almost as remarkable. Yet the city of Los Angeles did both, all in the name of art. This February, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art unveiled a new entrance and its star attraction, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). Located where Ogden Drive once stood, the reclaimed space now unites LACMA with its western campus, forming a contiguous 20-acre plot along Wilshire Boulevard. In the center of it all is the pristine new BCAM, which adds 60,000 square feet of exhibition space dedicated exclusively to contemporary art.
The museum is named for its lead patrons, Edythe and Eli Broad, the Los Angeles–based philanthropists and art collectors who donated $56 million for its construction. Weeks before its opening, Eli Broad announced he would not donate his collections to the museum as he had previously indicated, but rather leave it in a lending library–style trust. (Of the nearly 2,000 works in the collection, roughly one-fifth are held privately by the couple and the rest by the Broad Art Foundation.) The announcement added considerable buzz to the opening exhibition, intended to remain on view for at least a year, in which 80 percent of the works on view come from the Broads’ collections and the remaining 20 percent is split between LACMA’s own collection and selected loans.
For the past 35 years, the Broads have collected work by artists they felt were most significant to the development of contemporary art and continued to purchase their work over time. This style of collecting means the Broads have developed great depth in a relatively small number of artists, with significant works from different points in their creative careers. The Broads’ approach is reflected in the exhibition: The galleries are broken up into smaller spaces, each containing numerous examples by a recognized master. The top floor is an art history student’s dream, with superb examples by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons. The second floor is similarly installed with works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mike Kelley, Chris Burden, Cindy Sherman, Robert Therrien and Damien Hirst.
One exceptional room breaks this pattern and exhibits single works by artists who were seminal in the early 1980s, when the Broads began to collect aggressively. The first floor is given over to two glorious monumental steel sculptures by Richard Serra that invite viewers to wander in and among their sinuous forms.
One of the greatest works on view is the building itself, which was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Visitors are greeted by an exterior escalator not unlike the one Piano and Richard Rodgers used for the Pompidou Center in Paris in the 1970s. But this open-air version takes advantage of the warm California climate, with merely a roof overhead to protect from passing showers. Rising to the building’s main entrance on the third floor, it sets a tone of wonderment as visitors travel to a height that allows an unencumbered view of the iconic "Hollywood" sign in the distant hills.
Piano has a phenomenal ability to harness natural light. On the roof, he has built north-facing sunshades that direct the strong solar rays through glass skylights. Just below these are systems of screen panels that can be altered to control the light level as needed. The system bathes the stark white walls and bleached oak floors (polished concrete on the ground level) in an airy glow that provides a simple yet elegant backdrop for the artwork. Even the single, massive elevator has been built to facilitate viewing. Running through the center of the building, its doors are made of glass, allowing visitors to see the Barbara Kruger billboard messages wallpapered inside the elevator shaft.
Contemporary art also spills out of the building itself. Michael Govan, LACMA’s energetic young director, who came from the Dia Art Center in New York two years ago, hopes contemporary art will work as a lens through which visitors can view the museum’s encyclopedic visual art collections, which represent ancient and contemporary cultures from around the globe. The new entrance to the campus—where the street once stood—is fittingly marked by "Urban Light" (2008), an elegant installation of 200 antique Los Angeles street lamps salvaged, restored and arranged on the site by Burden. Along the walkways, visitors can see the beginnings of Robert Irwin’s "Palm Garden," a long-term landscape project that is planned for the entire campus. Just beyond the elevators to the new subterranean parking garage is Charles Ray’s lifesized, red "Firetruck," 1993. And on the Wilshire Boulevard façade are Baldessari’s "Banners," two 52-foot by 54-foot fabric scrims that adorn the front of the Piano building and are the inaugural project in what will become a rotating artist commission. All by Los Angeles artists, the works energize the open plaza and combine with the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum to cement Los Angeles’ position at the forefront of contemporary art.
Rebecca Dimling Cochran is an editorial correspondent for Art&Antiques and a private curator based in Atlanta.
Broad Contemporary Art Museum Los Angeles
323.857.6000 lacma.org
The museum is named for its lead patrons, Edythe and Eli Broad, the Los Angeles–based philanthropists and art collectors who donated $56 million for its construction. Weeks before its opening, Eli Broad announced he would not donate his collections to the museum as he had previously indicated, but rather leave it in a lending library–style trust. (Of the nearly 2,000 works in the collection, roughly one-fifth are held privately by the couple and the rest by the Broad Art Foundation.) The announcement added considerable buzz to the opening exhibition, intended to remain on view for at least a year, in which 80 percent of the works on view come from the Broads’ collections and the remaining 20 percent is split between LACMA’s own collection and selected loans.
For the past 35 years, the Broads have collected work by artists they felt were most significant to the development of contemporary art and continued to purchase their work over time. This style of collecting means the Broads have developed great depth in a relatively small number of artists, with significant works from different points in their creative careers. The Broads’ approach is reflected in the exhibition: The galleries are broken up into smaller spaces, each containing numerous examples by a recognized master. The top floor is an art history student’s dream, with superb examples by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons. The second floor is similarly installed with works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mike Kelley, Chris Burden, Cindy Sherman, Robert Therrien and Damien Hirst.
One exceptional room breaks this pattern and exhibits single works by artists who were seminal in the early 1980s, when the Broads began to collect aggressively. The first floor is given over to two glorious monumental steel sculptures by Richard Serra that invite viewers to wander in and among their sinuous forms.
One of the greatest works on view is the building itself, which was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Visitors are greeted by an exterior escalator not unlike the one Piano and Richard Rodgers used for the Pompidou Center in Paris in the 1970s. But this open-air version takes advantage of the warm California climate, with merely a roof overhead to protect from passing showers. Rising to the building’s main entrance on the third floor, it sets a tone of wonderment as visitors travel to a height that allows an unencumbered view of the iconic "Hollywood" sign in the distant hills.
Piano has a phenomenal ability to harness natural light. On the roof, he has built north-facing sunshades that direct the strong solar rays through glass skylights. Just below these are systems of screen panels that can be altered to control the light level as needed. The system bathes the stark white walls and bleached oak floors (polished concrete on the ground level) in an airy glow that provides a simple yet elegant backdrop for the artwork. Even the single, massive elevator has been built to facilitate viewing. Running through the center of the building, its doors are made of glass, allowing visitors to see the Barbara Kruger billboard messages wallpapered inside the elevator shaft.
Contemporary art also spills out of the building itself. Michael Govan, LACMA’s energetic young director, who came from the Dia Art Center in New York two years ago, hopes contemporary art will work as a lens through which visitors can view the museum’s encyclopedic visual art collections, which represent ancient and contemporary cultures from around the globe. The new entrance to the campus—where the street once stood—is fittingly marked by "Urban Light" (2008), an elegant installation of 200 antique Los Angeles street lamps salvaged, restored and arranged on the site by Burden. Along the walkways, visitors can see the beginnings of Robert Irwin’s "Palm Garden," a long-term landscape project that is planned for the entire campus. Just beyond the elevators to the new subterranean parking garage is Charles Ray’s lifesized, red "Firetruck," 1993. And on the Wilshire Boulevard façade are Baldessari’s "Banners," two 52-foot by 54-foot fabric scrims that adorn the front of the Piano building and are the inaugural project in what will become a rotating artist commission. All by Los Angeles artists, the works energize the open plaza and combine with the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum to cement Los Angeles’ position at the forefront of contemporary art.
Rebecca Dimling Cochran is an editorial correspondent for Art&Antiques and a private curator based in Atlanta.
Broad Contemporary Art Museum Los Angeles
323.857.6000 lacma.org
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