BROAD CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM (BCAM) 97% WHITE AND 87% MALE
The new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at LACMA was paid for with 50 million bucks from the munificent LA businessman and art collector Eli Broad. And the first show is a selection of art from his own private collection. How exciting!
Wait a minute... Broad, the philanthropist, claims that "public education is the key civil rights issue of the 21st century," but his art collection is a lesson in discrimination and exclusion. How can this exhibition be a legitimate survey of contemporary art with so few women and artists of color? Especially in Los Angeles! And at a public museum like LACMA!
Here are the stats:
BCAM, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA:
30 artists, 97% white, 87% male
Broad Foundation collection:
194 artists, 96% white, 83% male
Let's put lots of letters on Eli's desk! Use ours or write your own, then email Eli Broad (curator@broadartfoundation.org)
or snail mail Broad Art Foundation, 3355 Barnard Way, Santa Monica, CA 90405
February 13, 2008
Guerrilla Girls' "Dear Eli" Letter
2 comments:
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okay girls you have a point. But as a European it is even more offensive. There is one European in the show and that is Damien HIrst who is more New York then English. Soooooo add that to your stats as well please.
ReplyDeleteBest an american living in Europe
Feminist keeping score need only count to four when tabulating the number of woman showing at BCAM where 87% of the artists exhibited are male and 97% are white. However, opening concurrently, (and partially funded by the Broad Foundation), all four women included in the BCAM show walk away from its supporting context, installing work in over 50 LA locations via the public art initiative, “Women in the City.”
ReplyDeleteRecontextualizing earlier work, Jenny Holzer’s provocative slogans circulate in Spanish as well as English. Louis Lawler’s audio installation, Birdcalls, first issued in 1972, mocking inequities between the sexes in art market representation, is positioned near the Huntington’s lily pond, chiding allegations that feminists have no sense of humor. Devotees of Cindy Sherman’s deservedly admired work at BCAM can pilgrimage to view the faux B movie star cast in her first public project, Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), featured on billboards in the heart of Hollywood.
The most ironic placement of women’s work may be that of Barbara Kruger’s video billboard, Plenty, 2008, which tops LACMA West, (formerly a May Company department store). Literally turning her back on Baldessari’s wry banners, Irwin’s towering palms and the battalion of Burden’s equally phallic lamp posts which occupy Wilshire Boulevard, Kruger counsels to any audience approaching from the margins on 6th Street that there is no need to enlarge their lips or breasts or buy more stuff. They already have plenty.