LA's Museum The Broad = Modern Art Mother Lode

The phrase "mother lode" is a mining term tethered to the California gold rush.

Thanks to a family of progressive Los Angeles collectors, contemporary art lovers may now strike it rich with a visit to the state's newest museum, The Broad. 

Just reading about The Broad in 2014 and last year made me state aloud, "I wish Atlanta had its own art loving billionaire supercouple" like Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with "road").

The ATL has its share of billionaire couples, mind you, but sadly none of them have a passion for art on par with their love of fish and football. The "Mouth of the South" gives his money to U.N.-centric and other philanthropic projects, which leaves Anne Cox Chambers, John Wieland and a handful of others to try to keep the city's arts scene as close to world class as possible.

To their credit, these Atlanta arts patrons are indeed generous, but I don't think any of them are buying art the way the Broad family did.

A trip to The Broad yields room after room of fantastic contemporary and modern works by brand-name artists. My jaw dropped upon beholding the collection's massive Roy Lichtenstein canvas "Interior with African Mask" and, steps away, an entire room filled with other works spanning the artist's career. 

Need a dose of Andy Warhol? Then feast your eyes on another room full of his works.

And then there's the Jeff Koons sculptures -- remember those? You won't soon forget them once spotting the enormous "Balloon Dog (Blue)" and bokay of flowers titled "Tulips."

Damien Hirst? Check. Jean-Michel Basquiat? Check. Jasper Johns and Keith Haring? Check.

There's nobody in Atlanta who seems to be shopping for this stuff! Obviously, I wish they were.

New-to-my-eyes artist Mark Tansey made an impression with two large monochrome oil on canvas works titled "Achilles and the Tortoise" (a science versus nature statement) and "Forward Retreat."

A 1995 piece my Lari Pittman provided 25 minutes of study time. A case full of three-dimensional steel cutouts by Kara Walker was another fresh artist that left an impression.

Like the blood sought by vampires in "Only Lovers Left Alive," The Broad has the good stuff! They have so much good stuff, they built in a stairwell window enticing visitors to gaze into their cavernous on-site art storage room that teases of other greatness just waiting to dazzle in a future spotlight exhibition.

Hello! They did not just buy a Basquiat. They picked out several. And they are huge canvases, not the notebook leftovers. 

The only collector I've heard of who even comes close to the Broad family in terms of art acquisitions is Alice Walton, who continues to gather glorious works for Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Ark. (more on that collection here). 

The Broad not only presents fantastic contemporary art, but the building itself presents a masterpiece of light and shadow that can actually be seen from the street instead of from the sky like this design hidden from pedestrian view outdoors.

Just driving by or walking up to The Broad -- located in the block south of another head-turning building, the Walt Disney Symphony Hall -- gets visitors minds and hearts racing with an architectural proclamation that "this is going to be an intriguing museum."

Entering the museum from the street, guests are directed to a cavernous escalator that opens up to that Koons work "Tulips." 

I must admit to some agreement with the Washington Post's critical view of The Broad collection -- there are elements that are all over the place, or just not my cup of tea.

But for this writer, the pros far outweigh any cons of contemporary art purchases by Mr. and Mrs. Broad.

Love the room filled with edgy conversation starters by John Currin including "Anna" as well as "Old Couple" "Patch and Pearl" "Maenads" and "The Storm."

A few logistical notes for future visitors:

Tickets are (amazingly) FREE. With that said, tickets require advance reservations, with many dates and time ranges filled weeks in advance. I noticed a handful of walk-up visitors did seem to eventually get in after a patient wait, but planning ahead and playing it safe with a reservation is highly recommended to save time and consternation.

Parking is available beneath The Broad, but like other popular LA destinations, rates ain't cheap. The good news is that other museums and several places to dine are within walking distance, so one may make a day of their downtown visit and benefit from the daily versus hourly parking rate.

I highly recommend the newly reviewed on-site Otium Restaurant, which LA Times critic Jonathan Gold named the city's "most ambitious new restaurant in years."

If the Cultural Olympiad remains a component of the 2024 Olympic bid process, then the LA24 bid committee may benefit from collaboration with The Broad -- this writer can hardly wait for another opportunity to explore the collection on site.

For readers who made it this far in the post, a potential reward: Two VIP Passes to The Broad! With thanks to the museum public relations department for my ticket (and a pair of giveaway tickets) to the museum, I am giving away a free pair of General Admission "no line no waiting" VIP Passes to The Broad.

To win this pair of tickets, simply POST A COMMENT on this blog by Tuesday, May 31, 2016, at midnight Eastern Standard Time. I will put the names of comment providers into a hat and mail the passes to the person whose name is drawn. Thank you for reading about The Broad via Olympic Rings And Other Things!

Photos by Nicholas Wolaver

Banksy To Disney: It's A Small World, LOL!

If you boil down my public relations portfolio to three types of clients, the triumvirate includes, in no particular order, arts, Olympics and theme parks (more broadly "attractions").

From time to time there are overlaps among these genres of business.

Olympics meets arts at the Cultural Olympiad. Or theme parks coincide with the Games as sports venues become attractions (like Beijing's Water Cube turned water park), or new destinations are born around an Olympiad (the new-in-2014 Sochi World theme park, for instance). 

But unless you count art museums as attractions -- as my client International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) does for their membership base of permanently-affixed destinations for fun and learning -- it's less common for the news cycle to blend theme parks and the arts.

And that's not all that's uncommon about the new art installation titled Dismaland now open on the west coast of England. 

In case you haven't read the reports and seen the videos or photo galleries, Dismaland is perhaps the world's first 'bemusement park' now open in Weston-super-Mare, a coastal town three hours from London by train.

The hometown newspaper Weston, Worle & Somerset Mercury has some great galleries and daily updates like the pop-up park's first wedding.

Dismaland is presented by the artist Banksy, who recruited a few dozen other modern and contemporary artists for his secret-until-last-week installation at an abandoned beach side pool attraction named the Tropicana.

While the Weston-super-Mare locals were told a movie production would take over the abandoned Tropicana for a feature film setting, Banksy & Co. quietly assembled numerous rides and experiences inside its walls.

A wave of publicity began around August 18 as external signage and black flags went up, and by last Friday several global news outlets carried the story of Dismaland's opening weekend.

The installation remains in operation through much of September. 

Banksy has some major league art friends. Two favorite names -- Damien Hirst and Jenny Holzer -- leaped off the screen when my friend Brian first told me of early Dismaland reports in the Wall Street Journal.

A look at the complete list of artists yields a who's who compilation of known or rising stars of modern and contemporary artists, skewing heavy on the cynical scale through their conversation piece (and critically acclaimed, bold and unforgettable) creations. 

I fell in love with Holzer's work at her Walker Arts Center installation in Minneapolis in 1991, on my
first 'adult' visit to a museum during the autumn of my college freshman year.

She had me at Truisms and her carved benches at the High Museum of Art (a client from time to time) and other museums always make me smile. 

My first Hirst encounter arrived in 2012 at the Tate Modern's Cultural Olympiad exhibition the day after the London Olympics ended three years ago.

Something about a bovine head decomposing in a fly-filled glass box, or a great white shark encased in jello, or a live butterfly room followed by several canvases made from tens of thousands of butterfly wings, not surprisingly stays with the museum visitor.

Hirst's anatomically correct (inside and out) carvings of male and female medical school models, and gazillion-dollar diamond-encrusted skulls, also made an impression. 

Banksy's Oscar-nominated documentary film "Exit Through The Gift Shop" introduced me to his work -- then mostly a distinctive graffiti or tagging pieces -- making me an instant fan.

Banksy's Olympic street art intrigued me on the lead up to London 2012 (though I never did find any of it in person, likely due to collectors' theft or authority figures covering up Banksy's handiwork).

I theorize that one episode within "Exit Through The Gift Shop" itself created the foundation for Dismaland.

In the documentary, Banksy and a filmmaker accomplice embarked on a mission to install a temporary work of art -- an inflatable 'Guantanamo Bay prisoner' -- inside a fenced ride area of Disneyland. After purchasing tickets and making their way through the Happiest Place On Earth, Banksy did successfully deploy the smuggled work while cameras rolled.

It's safe to say Disneyland's security team was not amused.

According to the documentary narration, "While Banksy went on the rides, [the filmmaker] was introduced to a different side of the Magic Kingdom."

I won't spoil the film by revealing details of that experience, but it's a solid bet the shared adventure and its outcome planted many seeds for today's Dismaland, and last week's installation opening may be the result of more than five years of planning.

And, oh what bemusements await Dismaland visitors!

Outdoor highlights (er, lowlights) spotted online so far include:

• Entry queues for several hundred ticket holders (with wait times authentic to many theme park experiences), after which guests are curtly greeted by black and white-clad security guards and signs banning everything from weapons to underwear
  
• One Shamu-like orca leaping from a toilet toward an awaiting trainer's hoop
• A park bench on which a woman is swarmed, Hitchcock-style, by attacking seagulls
• Midway games including 'Topple the Anvil' (featuring the metal tools straight out of Looney Toons' Coyote and Road Runner episodes), and 'Hook the Duck' at which players attempt to rescue petroleum-covered rubber duckies from an oil spill (hint: the hooks are mismatched for an impossible latch)
• More oil spill adventures on an unplayable golf putting green nicknamed "Mini Gulf" (the top half of the "o" rusted and broke off)
  
• A not-so-merry-go-round carousel ridden by protesters and a knife-wielding purveyor of lasagna
• Park employees clad in day-glow "Dismal" branded vests, with some offering black Mylar balloons bearing the message "I AM AN IMBECILE"
• A massive, pretzel-bent tanker truck sculpture, with matching impractical picnic tables belched out of (and still attached to) rolled sheet metal (or is that bath tissue?)
• Motorized boat game through which players steer Mediterranean refugees or pursuant coast guard cutters 
  
• Children's sandbox play area with built-in micro-loan bank charging only 5,000 percent interest
• Caricature artist who only sketches the backs of her customer's heads
• Selfie holes featuring blank outlines or cutouts for group photos with ISIS soldiers
• A new twist on the pop-up puppet show featuring Punch & Judy
• Book burning featuring glowing works by local author James Joyce
• Several "traditional" Banksy street art works spray-painted about the Dismalandscape.

The creepiest and perhaps coolest, edgiest works are inside a custom-built castle, the centerpiece of the installation. Inside its doors visitors explore:

• An fan-suspended beach ball precariously hovering over a few dozen skyward-pointing (and sharpened) steak knives
• A miniature urban landscape featuring only police and media crews in the hours after a Ferguson, Missouri-like violent event
  
• Canvases featuring a truck full of weapons-clad ISIS soldiers (driven by Cookie Monster) and pollution-blackened Los Angeles skyline with one surviving color billboard for the real Disneyland
• Holzer's latest, brilliant word-infused works, including one stating (paraphrased here), "Keep Your Church Out of My Sex Life and I'll Stop Having Sex In Your Church"
• Bumper car demonstration featuring The Grim Reaper with soundtrack provided by Blue Oyster Cult

The most shocking work of Dismaland may be Cinderella's overturned golden carriage featuring a dying princess hanging out of the crashed vehicle, illuminated only by the strobe flashes of paparazzi cameras.

With the approaching anniversary of Princess Diana's fatal crash in Paris, this work is bound to remain a conversation piece (it takes one's breath away).

Looking at the actual rides installed at Dismaland with some knowledge of what buyers seek at IAAPA Attractions Expo each November, I cannot help wondering whether Banksy or any of the other artists attended the trade show in Orlando in recent years.

After all, some IAAPA member ride manufacturers likely provided the customized carousel, space ride (made to look like a camping trailer gone off its hitch), miniature Ferris wheel, the aforementioned bumper cars and other on-site thrills. What remains unclear is whether paying customers are allowed on the rides (for safety's sake, I hope if rides are permitted then operator protocols are in place).

I've been pricing flights to London and train tickets to Weston-super-Mare and for about $1,800 for a five-day journey from Atlanta, a trek to Dismaland my be slightly out of my budget. But then again, a week in Orange County, California, might be about the same range, right?

Since Dismaland includes its own signs instructing everyone to "Exit Through The Gift Shop" one might expect an expensive glossy catalog may soon be available as an alternative. Consider this blogger delightfully Banksy-bemused.

Most photos via Reuters except the Damien Hirst image at Tate Modern photo by Nicholas Wolaver

Roy Lichtenstein's "Girl With Ball" Bounces to ATL with 163 Other Works at High Museum of Art

During the summer of 2012, the Chicago Art Institute debuted the outstanding "Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective" exhibition set to open at the National Gallery of Art next week.

I'm guessing the curators of that exhibition were slightly miffed the Museum of Modern Art's iconic Lichtenstein canvas "Girl With Ball" was already booked for its High Museum of Art premiere in Midtown Atlanta.

Through some freelance P.R. work at the High these last few days, it was a privilege to experience "Girl With Ball" in the museum's new exhibition "Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913>>2013" through a media preview event held this week. What a treat!

Curated by Michael Rooks with co-curators Jodi Hauptman and Samantha Friedman of MoMA, "Fast Forward" features 164 works by 105 artists including some of my all-time favorites: Salvador Dali, Lichtenstein, Jenny Holzer among them. And there are some works easily recognized from past treks to MoMA, such as "Chief" by Franz Kline. The works including painting, sculpture, photography, film and other media appear centered around key historic dates of the last 100 years.

But what's to love most about "Fast Forward" are the surprises around several corners of the exhibition space. Upon exiting the museum elevators, the first right turn reveals "Unique Forms In Continuity," a gorgeous three-foot bronze statue of a figure in motion evocative of the lyrics to "Against The Wind" by Bob Seger. I love this Umberto Boccioni sculpture, and it's only made better positioned racing toward about a dozen Soviet propaganda posters that make it seem "the walls have eyes" (be sure to view the feature film from 1929 projected among these framed U.S.S.R. works).

Dali's miniature canvas "Illumined Pleasures" -- complete with a self-portrait of the artist's decapitated head, tiny insects and even tinier cyclists -- is displayed just steps from where Dali's "Persistence Of Memory" dazzled High visitors two years ago (also on loan from MoMA), and facing the currently displayed work is a beautiful canvas by Gerald Murphy showcasing an enormous wasp and sliced pear.

The next corner reveals the large and bug-like Kline work inspired by the artist's childhood memories of a locomotive. Moving fast forward another decade, the next corner brings the "Girl With Ball" into view flanked by an Andy Warhol canvas.

With stops in key years of the last century, wall texts describe how then-current events may have influenced the artists and their contemporaries. Another decade-to-decade action -- the evolution of transportation -- is subtly revealed as more vehicles, including a crushed car, take the stage. A three-dimensional untitled work by Lee Bentecou jumps out of the wall as though a fighter jet engine is backing into the museum. "The Chariot" by Alberto Giacometti is a must-see vehicular piece. Shapshots taken from within cars of the mid-century reveal modern moments of days gone by.

I loved locating two matching Jenny Holzer pieces (rubbings from her carved marble benches?) as "Fast Forward" rolled into the 1980s.

And this was the first time my eyes met a Jeff Koons work, a life-sized porcelain of a topless blond woman embracing the Pink Panther. Interesting.

Then the cavalcade of modern moments moves again, one last time to 2012-13 with an immersive floor-to-ceiling, half-room-sized new commission by artist Sarah Sze that must be seen to be believed (sort of a twist on Damien Hirst's creations featuring hundreds or thousands of the similar items on display in a single work). If you're into seek-and-find, try to locate Sze's plane ticket to Atlanta as part of this space-specific creation.

"Fast Forward" is on display at the High now through January 2013, by which time we will all fast forward to the highly anticipated exhibition "Frida & Diego" bringing together the Mexico artists/spouses Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Until, then, "Fast Forward" is an excellent option for an afternoon of art exploration in Midtown Atlanta.

Photos via the High, MoMA and select exhibition photos by Nicholas Wolaver