By now the biggest cultural news of the past month has probably filtered through to you via other media. The opening of the new Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles was an international event, with days of civic, press and public events to celebrate its launch.
Santa Monica's loss is the greater community's gain: the wonderful old telephone building on Barnard Way that used to house Eli and Edythe Broad's 2000-piece collection of post-war contemporary art has been sold. Now all the artworks reside in the new "veil and vault" structure designed by the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro built in collaboration with Gensler.
The unusual-looking building, located on Grand Avenue a block from the Music Center, joins Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki's MOCA building across the street, and features an oculus embedded in a waffle-cone edifice, which surrounds a three story building. The top and bottom floors are dedicated to art galleries, the second floor is administrative.
In this inaugural exhibition, 250 works are on view, curated by Founding Director Joanne Heyler. The Broad will continue its lending library mission, sharing its collection with museums around the world.
Starting on the third floor you'll find a chronological art journey from the 1950s to the 1990s, with galleries focusing on pop art by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the balloon-toy and high-kitsch work of art fabricator Jeff Koons, the chalkboard-style scribble paintings of Cy Twombly and an entire room filled with Kara Walker's pointedly political black-and-white cutouts that cover the African American experience in America.
Graffiti-style work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, photographic manipulations by Cindy Sherman and the pixilated canvases of Chuck Close are treated here. For a sense of perspective, stand "Under the Table," a giant-sized dining room set by Robert Therrien that will make you feel like Alice in Wonderland.
LA's own Mike Kelley (sadly no longer with us) is represented by a stunning eye-catcher in black, white and dizzying patterns. Works by other L.A. artists are on view including John Baldessari, Mark Bradford and Ed Ruscha.
On the first floor, the dark, curvy cavernous entry hall leads to your choice of an escalator experience to the third floor that's been described as going through a birth canal, or the tubular glass-enclosed elevator that's artfully futuristic.
But stay downstairs for the artworks from the year 2000 on, and if you plan to visit the Broad be sure, to book yourself into Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirrored Room" from 2013, a mirror-lined chamber housing a dazzling LED light display that is reflected endlessly and allows for only one person at a time for 45 seconds. There'll be a long line and you'll need a reservation. It's worth waiting for.
Another highlight is Ragnar Kjartansson's nine-screen 360-degree video projection of a music performance set in a derelict historic mansion, with each screen and its speaker focused on one musician, each in a separate room throughout the house, playing and singing their parts of the hour-long song. There's even a guitarist in a bathtub!
Some of the work on the first floor reflects artists' political perspectives, such as Robert Longo's charcoal drawing "Untitled (Ferguson Police August 13, 2014)" and Julie Mehretu's "Cairo, 2013," her swirling representation of the architecture, atmosphere and turbulent social unrest in the Egyptian capital during the Arab Spring.
The Broad is located at 221 South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles. It's open Tuesday through Sunday, admission is free and you can reserve your visit time atwww.thebroad.org/tickets.
City Garage "Tartuffe"
Classic plays, such as Moliere's farcical moral tale "Tartuffe" are often revived and revised for contemporary consumption.
Among the more adept adapters is Bergamot Station-based City Garage. Frederique Michel, whose native language is French, has translated the text with a still-formal twist to her contemporaneous language, and her long time producing partner Charles A. Duncombe has produced and staged a visually stunning show. They've titled it "Tartuffe: A Reality Show," and if you want to compare it to Life with the Kardashians you wouldn't be too far off the mark.
What City Garage does on its small stage always involves platforms and multiple levels, here with a palette of bold colors, furnished in 1960s Playboy mansion style including a leopard-skin bar, a bear rug and abstract expressionist art on the walls.
Reality show-style, we're introduced to the characters by way of video interviews before the action on stage begins. And when it does, we're confronted with the question of who really can really claim to provide anything like a moral center.
Members of this rich family are struggling to oppose the influence of the hypocritical con man who has seduced the father into believing he is a devoutly spiritual guru. Even as he moves into their home taking advantage of their material possessions, he's attempting to seduce the Sofia Vergara-like sexy daughter-in-law.
But is there anything socially redeeming about this overtly decadent and spoiled family? The runaway star is the only character with a grip on reality, the maid of machinations, Dorina, played here by J. Carlos Flores in perfect drag.
If you're going to do farce, do it over the top and all in; this production meets that standard.
"Tartuffe: A Reality Show" at City Garage runs through November 1. Visitwww.citygarage.orgfor tickets and information.
Sarah A. Spitz spent her career as a producer at public radio station KCRW-Santa Monica and produced freelance arts reports for NPR. She has also written features and reviews for various publications.
