The Inaugural Installation at LACMA's Broad Contemporary Art Museum

"Filled with some of the most iconic artworks from the last four decades—most from the famed Broad Collections—the newly opened Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA offers visitors "the distilled essence of contemporary American art," in the London Times's recent assessment. Reflecting Eli and Edythe Broad’s practice of collecting particular artists in depth, most of BCAM’s sixty thousand square feet of gallery space is devoted to groupings of works by single artists. BCAM thus provides rich representations of some of the most important artists of the last forty years, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Baldessari, Jeff Koons, Chris Burden, Mike Kelley, and Richard Serra."

The Inaugural Installation at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at LACMA contains a huge array of different eras of modern art. The entire third floor consists mostly of Pop art. The lighting throughout the floor is a mixture of natural light and soft white lighting. The lighting compliments the colorful works of Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein among many others. The space in the gallery is very open with one large freestanding wall on each end. The space allows for the various displays of Jeff Koons’ large and small sculpture pieces. Balloon Dog (blue), Michael Jackson and Bubbles and Louis XIV are a few examples of Koons’ sculptures currently on-display. There are various paintings as well as a huge wall mural taking up one of the freestanding walls, which contains an arrangement of tinted black and white photographs, a large colorful flower and handguns. The right-side area behind the freestanding wall is full of Andy Warhol pieces. All the Warhol pieces are on the wall, since most are on some sort of canvas/framed material, except for the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes sculpture/installation in the corner. The placement of the boxes in the corner works incredibly well. The boxes seem to be overflowing from the wall into the gallery space. The arrangement of the Roy Lichtenstein’s artworks on the other end of the gallery flows quite well. The pieces are arranged by earlier to later work and seem to flow well color and style-wise. The comic book-like pieces are placed together while further down the wall the use of benday dots become similar to each other. The placement of the pieces in the third floor flows well and is unique from the other two floors that featured more recent artwork.

BCAM’s first and second floors contain two completely different kinds of art. The second floor contains a lot of artwork by Cindy Sherman, ranging from the well known Film Stills to more recent works done in the 1990s and 2000s. Upon entering the area where the Cindy Sherman works are on display, it is significantly darker and the walls are a different color than on the third floor of BCAM. All the walls are a darker color, which go well with the dark colors and gloomy content of the large photographs. One wall is covered in framed portraits hanging salon style. In the center of the space are two tables with glass covers. Inside the glass are the infamous Film Stills. The display is unique from the rest of the pieces in the space and the content of the matted photographs is different from the pieces hanging on the wall as well. The rest of the displays on the second floor are much darker in content than the third floor. The lighting is much darker and the works are gloomy and strange. There is a video installation complete with matching sculpture and photographs as well as a giant dining table with four chairs.

The first floor consists of two large installations of Richard Serra’s work. The extremely large scale rounded, maze-like installations almost take up the entire gallery space. The lighting comes directly above the installations and helps in creating dark shadows in certain areas. This helps create a mysterious yet adventurous aspect to the installations.

There are many more artists, artworks and installations to be seen in the three floors of BCAM. One of the artworks I wish to have seen much closer is the three-floor high Barbara Kruger piece. Unfortunately, the day I went the glass elevator which passes through the piece was out of service and I was only able to view it one floor at a time. Regardless, the display is a must see for well-known American art enthusiasts and seeing some of Pop arts greatest icons’ works in person is a much better experience than from a textbook. The Inaugural Installation runs until September 2008 at BCAM, part of LACMA in Westwood, CA.

-- Des-Vee