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The Broad Collection Acquires 29 Artworks, Adds Six New Artists During The Broad Museum’s Inaugural Year

Museum Deepens Holdings of Works by Los Angeles Artists and Artists of the “Pictures Generation”

Image credits (clockwise): Ericka Beckman, You The Better, 1983/2015; Tauba Auerbach, Shadow Weave–Chiral Fret Wave, 2015; Oscar Murillo, trade today, 2014–15; Jonas Wood, Children’s Garden, 2015

LOS ANGELES, July 29, 2016—Continuing the active development of its collection during its first year of operation, The Broad expanded its collection by 29 artworks over the past year, including pieces by 1980s Pictures Generation artists Cindy Sherman, John Baldessari, Sherrie Levine and Ericka Beckman, the museum announced today. In addition, more than a third of the 29 new artworks acquired were by Los Angeles artists, and The Broad also added six new artists to the collection, including Oscar Murillo, Tauba Auerbach and Jonas Wood.

“The Broad is a hallmark collection for artists who emerged in the 1980s, whose preoccupations and innovations are still so resonant and influential in today’s ever expanding image-saturated world, and many of our acquisitions deepen those holdings,” said Joanne Heyler, founding director of The Broad, “while the addition of more L.A.-based artists also extends our long history of collecting art within L.A.’s dynamic art scene.”

Five Sherman works, currently on view through Oct. 2 in the museum’s first special exhibition, Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life, have been added to the collection, bringing the Broad collection’s holdings of the artist’s works to 129—the largest collection of Sherman’s work in the world. Four of the acquisitions are from Sherman’s most recent body of work, completed earlier this year and featuring the artist as aging film personas. The museum also acquired an important 1980 work, Untitled #71, from Sherman’s rear-screen projection series.

The Broad collection now has 11 works by Sherrie Levine, with the addition of her cast bronze Beach Ball after Lichtenstein, 2015, which questions ideas of originality and how value is accrued.

Media artist Ericka Beckman enters the collection with You The Better, a 16- millimeter film created in 1983. The 32-minute film explores games of chance and the powerlessness of players—and the viewer, drawn into the action—to affect the outcome. The acquisition also includes set pieces, shown with synchronized lighting, that together with the film comprise the installation.

The Broad also continues to build its collection of Los Angeles artist John Baldessari with a recent work, That’s Not Bad…, 2015, which brings the number of Baldessari works in the collection to 41.

With more than 200 artists in the Broad collection, the museum is continuing to add new artists, signaling a commitment by the institution to collect them in depth. The collection’s first work by Oscar Murillo, an artist based in London and La Paila, Colombia, is an eight-panel work composed of canvases hanging like flags titled trade today, 2014–15, examining the contemporary global economy.

New to the collection, artist Tauba Auerbach engages physics and science as she experiments with perceptions of space in her subtle yet visually beautiful works. Shadow Weave – Chrial Fret Wave, 2015, features a woven canvas across a wooden stretcher, while Grain: Slice/Maille I, 2015 contains a pattern made from a form pushed across the painting’s surface leaving a complex mark that recalls the form itself.

Local artist Jonas Wood enters the collection with his painting Children’s Garden, 2015, which furthers the artist’s ongoing investigation of intimate environments. The work is an adaptation of an old photograph of Jonas’ childhood daycare center— featuring chaotic shelving crowded with toys and books—into an illustrative scene composed of shape, pattern and saturated color.

Los Angeles artist Alex Israel joins the Broad collection with the acquisition of five works, all created over the last two years. Two of the works—Lens (Orange), 2015, an eight-foot tall orange sunglass lens made of UV-protective plastic, and Self-Portrait (Selfie and Studio Floor), 2014, featuring the artist’s profile in fiberglass—were recently on loan to the Huntington Library as part of an intervention in its historic Huntington Art Gallery. Other works from Israel added to the collection include the monumental painting Sky Backdrop, 2014–15; the billboard-sized Over L.A., 2015, a collaboration with writer Bret Easton Ellis; and Untitled (Tiled Flat Triptych), 2014–15, a three-panel painting that reads as much as a Hollywood movie set as an altarpiece.

Three of the newest works, created this year, are by Los Angeles artist Thomas Houseago, who was added to the collection in 2012. From a series of haunting black paintings the artist worked on for many months, Black Painting 6, 2016; Black Painting 11, 2016, and Black Painting 12, 2016, depict, through subtle shifts in tone and paint handling, nearly abstract faces bearing the traces of early 20th century art that have imbued the artist’s work through much of his career.

The earliest work in the Broad collection’s latest acquisitions is Sam Francis’s Summer #1, 1957, a robust example of Francis’ distinctive polychrome on white works of the mid-1950s. This work is the fifth Francis work made in 1950s Paris to be added to the collection, bringing the total number of works by Francis in the Broad collection to eight.

Highlights of Recent Acquisitions
Los Angeles artist Mark Grotjahn now has six works in the Broad collection, with the addition of Untitled (Pink Cosco VI Mask M40.g), 2016. Andreas Gursky, Pyongyang IV, 2007, captures a North Korean festival simultaneously focusing on abstract pattern while honing in on the collective experience of this human spectacle. The collection now has 21 works by Gursky.

A personal health crisis inspired George Condo’s Self Portraits Facing Cancer 1, 2015, after the artist battled vocal cord cancer. The collection added a bronze sculpture by Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2002, bringing to 23 the number of works by the artist in the Broad collection.

Other recent acquisition highlights include Piotr Uklanski’s The Nazis, 1998 which consists of 164 paneled photographs of famous actors playing roles of Nazis in films, jarringly combining the slick seduction of the cinematic image and the harrowing truth of events past, bringing to question the way in which history is told and shaped. It is the first work by Uklanski to enter the Broad collection.

Two works by Gregory Crewdson, The Disturbance, 2014 and The Basement, 2014, both display carefully staged interior scenes where open-ended narratives emerge, and bring to 14 the number of works by the artist in the collection.

View and download a pdf of select recent acquisitions

About the Broad Collection
The Broad collection includes The Broad Art Foundation and The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, which together hold nearly 2,000 works of postwar and contemporary art. With a strong desire to advance public appreciation for contemporary art, the Broads established The Broad Art Foundation in 1984 as a way to keep these works in the public domain through an enterprising loan program that makes the art available for exhibition at accredited institutions throughout the world. The Broads continue to actively add to the collection through strategic acquisitions focused on expanding the representations of an artist’s work and broadening the scope of the collection. The result is a lending library of contemporary art and an expansive collection that is regularly cited as among the top in the world.

About The Broad
The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. The museum, which is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, opened Sept. 20, 2015 with free general admission. The museum is home to the nearly 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is among the most prominent holdings of postwar and contemporary art worldwide. With its innovative “veil-and-vault” concept, the 120,000- square-foot, $140-million building features two floors of gallery space to showcase The Broad’s comprehensive collection and will be the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library.

For more information on The Broad and to sign up for updates, please visit thebroad.org.

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