MOCA presents Art in the Streets

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is showing the first major U.S. museum exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art until August 8, 2011, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Organized by Jeffrey Deitch and associate curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose, Art in the Streets signs the development of graffiti and street art from the 1970s to the global movement it has become today, showcasing the works by 50 of the most renowned artists by the graffiti and street art community, including including Banksy (London), Fab 5 Freddy (New York), Lee Quiñones (New York), Futura (New York), Margaret Kilgallen (San Francisco), Swoon (New York), Shepard Fairey (Los Angeles), Os Gemeos (São Paulo), and JR (Paris).

The exhibition emphasizes Los Angeles’s role in the evolution of graffiti and street art, with
special sections dedicated to cholo graffiti and Dogtown skateboard culture, as well as hilighting
photographers and filmmakers who documented graffiti and street art culture including Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, James Prigoff, Steve Grody, Gusmano Cesaretti, Estevan Oriol, Ed Templeton, Larry Clark, Terry Richardson, and Spike Jonze.
Works by influential local artists such as Craig R. Stecyk III, Chaz Bojórquez, Mister Cartoon, Robbie Conal, RETNA, SABER, REVOK, and RISK, are also featured.

Art in the Streets also features a timeline illustrated with artwork
photography, video, and ephemera, providing a compehensive historical context to its visitors.

The exhibition includes several shows, namely a special section dedicated to the Fun Gallery and curated by its founder Patti Astor, featuring the works of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the graffiti artists who shaped the gallery’s history.

The public can also visit a section dedicated to the seminal film Wild Style (1983), co-curated by the film’s director Charlie Ahearn, documenting its influence on the global dissemination of graffiti and hip-hop culture, watch a memorial presentation of Battle Station by legendary artist and theorist RAMMELLZEE, and a display of graffiti black books and other historic works
from the Martin Wong Collection presented in collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York.
A re-creation of an urban street complete with overturned trucks by Todd James, Barry McGee, and Steve Powers, offers a Los Angeles version of Street Market.

An extensive programme of educational and community workshops complements the exhibition, including a graffiti and street art film festival presented in collaboration with the Cinefamily, music and dance programs featuring some of the originators of hip-hop and break dancing, and an admission free Levi’s® Film Workshop at MOCA, offering a diverse schedule of programming that celebrates the craft of filmmaking and explores the exhibition’s subject matter.
A special version of Associate Curator Aaron Rose’s Make Something!! educational project will also be presented at various Los Angeles high schools.

A comprehensive catalogue on the history of graffiti and street art published by Skira Rizzoli and edited by Nikki Columbus, former associate editor of Artforum, will accompanies the exhibition.

Following MOCA’s presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be on view March 30–July 8, 2012.
This major exhibition follows a partnership between the Brooklyn Museum and MOCA started in 2005 with Brooklyn-organized exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, followed by the MOCA-organized ©MURAKAMI in 2007. A partnership between two major culture institutions that has proved itself successful by bringing to the public a major record of public art over the past half century.

Art in the Streets can be visited until August 8, 2011, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (formerly The Temporary Contemporary).

Designs Unveiled for The Broad Museum

The designs of The Broad Art Foundation (The Broad), a contemporary art museum to be built on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, were revealed by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad and architect Elizabeth Diller.
Dubbed “the veil and the vault,” and designed by world-renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the three-story museum will feature a unique porous honeycomb “veil” that wraps the building and is visible through an expansive, top floor sky-lit gallery that will be home to great works of contemporary art drawn from the 2,000-piece Broad Collections assembled over the past 40 years.

The 120,000-square-foot project will feature almost an acre of column-free gallery space, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, a ground floor multimedia gallery, a public lobby with display space and a museum shop. Also to be included is a state-of-the-art archive, with study and art storage space that will be available to scholars and curators who want to research works in the collection and borrow artworks for their institutions through The Broad Art Foundation.
The public entry to the museum will complement the landscaped plaza to the south that is part of the Grand Avenue Project’s master plan. Its lobby will include a bookshop and espresso bar. Visitors will then journey upwards via an escalator, tunneling through the archive, arriving onto 40,000 square feet of column-free exhibition space bathed in diffuse light.
Presenting a 24-foot-high space, the area will be fully adaptable according to the curatorial needs.
The exhibition exit will be made through a winding stair through the vault, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses into the vast holdings of the Broad Collections and the foundation’s lending library operations, leading visitors back to the lobby.

With its construction predicted to begin in late summer and to be completed in two years, The Broad's inaugural exhibition will feature 200 of the most iconic works from the Broad Collections, including many recent additions to the collection and works never seen before in Los Angeles.
The exhibition show the artworks of Doug Aitken, El Anatsui, John Baldessari, Jean Michel Basquiat, Mark Bradford, Joseph Beuys, Chuck Close, Marlene Dumas, Sam Francis, Ellen Gallagher, Mark Grotjahn, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Sharon Lockhart, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Cady Noland, Lari Pittman, Neo Rauch, Robert Rauschenberg, Charles Ray, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Robert Therrien, Cy Twombly, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol and Christopher Wool, among many others.

For three years after the inaugural exhibition, The Broad will feature rotating exhibitions every four months, focusing on artists represented in distinctive depth in the collection, such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andreas Gursky, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Cindy Sherman, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol and Christopher Wool.
During exhibitions, curators will be able to include lent works that will enhance the exhibition's theme, the perspetive about the artist, etc.

Founders of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation, which they established to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts, as well as supporting other areas such as scientific and medical research, Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe, are devoted to philanthropy.