Joanne Heyler is the founding director of The Broad museum and director and chief curator of The Broad Art Foundation. She has been Eli Broad’s principal art advisor for the past 23 years.
Artillery: Have you ever disagreed with a purchasing decision, or the final price on a purchase or an auction bid (as Edye is known to have done on at least one occasion)?
HEYLER: I don’t have any stories as colorful as Edye’s! If what you’re getting after is where my taste fits into the picture, in general Eli tends to gravitate toward the core piece from a body of work. He wants the major statement, and that makes sense. Sometimes I am off on the edges, intrigued by the more eccentric, out-there, least typical example from an artist’s given show. The combination is good.
Have you also been responsible for pulling him into artists’ studios? (You brought him, as I understand it, to Mark Bradford’s studio—among others, I assume.)
I go back a long time with some artists who are now held deeply in the collection. I was just taking Sharon Lockhart on her first tour through the museum, and she reminded me that my first “studio visit” with her was a viewing of one of her earliest films on the TV in the bedroom of her one bedroom apartment in Silver Lake. We’ve both come a long way. Eli wasn’t at that first studio visit, but my early encounter with her work led to a substantial grouping in the Broad collection.
Are you buying directly from artist’s studios more often in recent years?
I don’t keep a tally, but that seems right. Usually though it is a studio visit happening just in advance of a gallery show.
With respect to the strategic aspect of the acquisitions—do you have a specific strategy of your own: In terms of private or auction sales? In terms of shaping the collection as a whole?
This collection is fairly wide ranging, after almost five decades of development, but we have no intention of sewing things up and only expanding on the work of artists already held in the collection. We add at least a few artists to the collection each year. There isn’t a prescribed selection process. We are currently looking at adding a wave of new and in some cases younger artists to the collection, and in fact have begun doing so with artists like Goshka Macuga and Tauba Auerbach.
Has there ever been a work you coveted with a particular passion that you (and Mr. Broad) were unable to acquire?
There are quite a few, but “one that got away” was—appropriately, actually—a fish. A Calder fish mobile to be exact. It was a beautiful, exquisite work but it now belongs to someone else. One of the less expected facets of the Broads’ collection is their wonderful Calder works. A fish mobile would have been a great addition but it wasn’t meant to be.
Is there any work in particular you’re obsessed with acquiring right now – whether for yourself or for Mr. Broad?
I’m demurring on that one. I can’t show my hand that publicly!
PLEASE READ ON FOR A FULL UNEDITED VERSION OF THE Q&A with Joanne Heyler, interviewed by Ezrha Jean Black
Mr. Broad has been known to work closely with gallery directors, as well as purchasing directly at auction – but may I assume you advise in those bids and negotiations? I work closely with many galleries—their owners and directors– and have over my entire career with the Broad collection. I also attend, and in the past have sometimes bid in, the auction salerooms, mainly in New York, on behalf of the Broad collection. Eli and I discuss nearly all acquisition decisions, at auction or anywhere, before proceeding, regardless of whether he initiates the interest in a work or I do. It’s still true, however, that at the end of the day, acquisitions depend on his yes or no. My recommendations hold weight but are not followed blindly.
Have you ever disagreed with a purchasing decision, or the final price on a purchase, or an auction bid (as Edye is known to have done on at least one occasion)? I don’t have any stories as colorful as Edye’s! If what you’re getting after is where my taste fits into the picture, in general Eli tends to gravitate toward the core piece from a body of work. He wants the major statement, and that makes sense. Sometimes I am off on the edges, intrigued by the more eccentric, out-there, least typical example from an artist’s given show. The combination is good.
I once advocated for a diptych by Ed Ruscha, called Azteca/Azteca in Decline that we ultimately acquired even though it is an outlier work. It has no typography, and it’s a strange size for Ruscha. It isn’t in the inaugural installation mainly because it is so vast – about 28 feet laid edge to edge. Even in our new building very few walls can handle it. A lot of people don’t know it, and it has to be seen in person to be appreciated or even understood. It’s about impermanence, illusion and decline and decay in the way the Course of Empire series works are, but not everyone would recognize it immediately as a Ruscha. I remain intrigued by it and look forward to exhibiting it sometime in the future. It might always be an outlier work with the context of Ed’s overall career but that’s ok. I am glad we have it.
A more recent work I pulled into the collection is Robert Longo’s Ferguson drawing. I found it at the Miami Basel art fair last year. I remember that the protests in NYC about the Eric Warner case were happening at the same time. I was navigating the phenomenon that is Miami Basel that week, with my feet in its decadent world but my head somewhere else. Issues about race and police brutality transfixed most of the rest of the country, but here I was, immersed in a famed art market ritual, champagne flowing, party invitations flooding in. Then this work came into view. I called Eli, sent him the image, and we acquired it. A week or two later the Guardian’s art critic, out of the blue, wrote about this specific drawing as the single most important artwork produced in 2014. I was surprised at that because art that is direct or representational about politically charged subjects is out of fashion right now. But I have been around too long to base all my judgments on fashion. It currently hangs in the first gallery space of our 1st floor at The Broad.
Have you also been responsible in pulling him into artists’ studios? (You brought him, as I understand it, to Mark Bradford’s studio – among others, I assume.) I go back a long time with some artists who are now held deeply in the collection. I was just taking Sharon Lockhart on her first tour through the museum, and she reminded me that my first “studio visit” with her was a viewing of one of her earliest films on the TV in the bedroom of her one bedroom apartment in Silverlake. As I showed Sharon today the photographs of hers that are in the inaugural installation, as well as the many others we have stored safely in the “cool room” of the museum, beautifully organized on rolling racks, it was a spontaneous moment of celebration. We’ve both come a long way. Eli wasn’t at that first studio visit, but my early encounter with her work led to a substantial grouping in the Broad collection.
Mark Bradford told me not long ago that he first heard my name when I had inquired about his work back in the 90s at a local gallery. I didn’t meet Mark in person until years later, after I had again noticed his work at the exhibition Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem and started following it even more closely. Mark told me a few months ago, something like “look, you were there not just in the beginning but before the beginning. That really matters.” His work evolved over a long period of time and I watched patiently. By around 2006, we started buying his work in depth—today we have 8 works, with every intention of buying more. And now, Eli prompts me constantly about keeping up with his studio.
Those are just two examples of artists I identified for the collection years ago, whose work we’ve gone on to hold in great depth.
Are you buying directly from artist’s studios more often in recent years? I don’t keep a tally, but that seems right. Usually though it is a studio visit happening just in advance of a gallery show.
How often do you or Mr. Broad specifically commission work from artists? That is extremely rare. It actually hasn’t happened since the mid 1990s when the Broads commissioned Richard Serra to create a 60 ton sculpture that still stands on the grounds of their home.
Are there certain artists (besides Jeff Koons) Mr. Broad favors for commissions? Actually we haven’t ever truly commissioned Jeff to make any work of art. We have committed to buy a work before it is finished, which is not the same as commissioning.
With respect to the ‘strategic’ aspect of the acquisitions – do you have a specific strategy of your own –
In terms of private sales?
Selecting from lots coming up at auction?
In terms of shaping the collection as a whole? This collection is fairly wide ranging, after almost 5 decades of development, but we have no intention of sewing things up and only expanding on the work of artists already held in the collection. We add at least a few artists to the collection each year. There isn’t a prescribed selection process. We are currently looking at adding a wave of new and in some cases younger artists to the collection, and in fact have begun doing so with artists like Goshka Macuga and Tauba Auerbach.
As we move through our initial life as a public institution, and the collection keeps growing, we will face the same question every museum faces: how do you stay contemporary? Museums are living contradictions in a lot of ways that others have articulated as well as or better than I can. Being a town square of sorts, under pressure to attract a large public audience—but also being a beacon for scholarship, as well as keeping an eye on what is current – and often fleeting – in curatorial practice, and then also navigate the dynamic of the art market, which inevitably plays a role in the vast majority of museums showing contemporary art. There’s a lot in that stew.
Has there ever been a work you coveted with a particular passion that you (and Mr. Broad) were unable to acquire? There are quite a few, but “one that got away” was— appropriately, actually—a fish. A Calder fish mobile to be exact. It was a beautiful, exquisite work but it now belongs to someone else. One of the less expected facets of the Broads’ collection is their wonderful Calder works. A fish mobile would have been a great addition but it wasn’t meant to be.
Is there any work in particular you’re obsessed with acquiring right now – whether for yourself or for Mr. Broad? I’m demurring on that one. I can’t show my hand that publicly!
If we (the viewing public) were to have a peek at your own private collection, do you think there would be any surprises? I have a very modest personal collection. I have a photo from Cathie Opie’s portrait series from the 1990s. I have a Sharon Ellis painting from even earlier, which I bought on a payment plan from the gallery that showed her work at the time. I remember that Eli visited the same show and the dealer told him I had bought one of the paintings. This was a long time ago. He supposedly told her that his staff must be overpaid, which is an absolutely in character thing for Eli to have said.
What are your own special art ‘tweaks’ distinct from your advisory/directorial role at the Broad? This isn’t an art tweak per se, but I architecturally I love the Salk Institute. On many trips to San Diego I used to make time to wander around it, and just be near it, for no particular reason. I guess I’m not alone because the UCSD campus now requires you to get permission to do this. It’s an intriguing building designed by Louis Kahn, with a beautiful relationship to the ocean it overlooks. There is a work in the Broad collection, a video installation by Doug Aitken called New Skin, that was shot partially at that Kahn building. That Kahn building and Elizabeth Diller’s design for The Broad, are both very cinematic. Though very different buildings, they share a incredibly photogenic quality—both are filled with dramatic, seductive moments and vistas that look amazing in photographs—and yet neither is fully understandable as architecture if you don’t walk through them completely, “in the round,” because of the unique, unexpected ways their very distinctive parts inter relate to the whole, and to their respective settings. Grand Avenue and downtown LA in our case, the ocean in the case of the Salk Institute.
Is there a private art collection (other than the Broads’) – whether here in L.A. or elsewhere – that you particularly admire? Setting aside the ‘biggies’ (i.e., the Met, the Louvre, etc. – and perhaps the local ‘faves’, too) – do you have a(nother) favorite museum? I haven’t been there for a while but I like the Menil in Houston, including of course the Rothko chapel and the Twombly pavilion. In general, it probably won’t come as a shock that I like visiting the larger museums founded by individuals – everywhere from the Wallace Collection in London, to the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, to the Kimbell in Fort Worth.
Speaking of priorities – how have your priorities shifted as the Museum has approached completion and you find yourself running a very public institution? Converting a private foundation that lends its collection into an institution that serves a public audience directly is not easy, and not for the faint of heart, especially if you are doing it for the long haul, which we are. I have discovered however that I really, really enjoy connecting the public with art, and exploring many ways to do that and try to do it better. Hundreds of thousands of people have booked their free tickets to come here, so we seem to be doing something right. And because I don’t spend that much of my time fundraising, I can really focus on this aspect of the museum and really get into the weeds of it.
I have been involved with the Broads’ philanthropy in museums for years now, so while maybe my most visible work is focused on the collection, I’ve also had a long time to observe how museums operate and learn from that. I have become acquainted with a lot of the best museum directors in the world, and so when it came time to start this one, I had a good rolodex to work with (if people say “rolodex” anymore!). I don’t just mean via casual conversations, but through witnessing high and low points at many museums, close up, and being involved sometimes with some of the strategic work behind the scenes. That work partly awakened my innate curiosity about how larger institutions run, their strengths, faults and frailties. I am trying to use that information, all of my experience with institutions over the past decade-plus, to run this one as well as I can.
One of the Broad’s hallmarks – indeed it’s stated as such in the Broad Foundation’s mission statement – is its artistic ‘career focus’ with respect to the artists selected for the collection and the decision, really a general policy, to collect the artist’s work in depth, to include all major phases of an artist’s career.
But the depths vary considerably from one artist to the next. I mean, it’s quite a leap from say, the 573 pieces by Joseph Beuys (I realize this had something to do with an unusual acquisition opportunity) to the 124 photographs of Cindy Sherman or even the 45 Ruschas or 34 Koons or Lichtenstein works.
There are some surprising depths here, too. Most people in the art world are aware of the Broad’s important Twomblys; but until recently I wasn’t aware that the Broad had 22. Similarly, I was a bit surprised to learn that you had 20 works by Christopher Wool – and in a fairly broad range. (And what might be regarded as a few surprising ‘shallows’ – e.g., one might expect more works by, say, Sigmar Polke or Jorg Immendorf.)
Generally, though, judging from the collection as it stands to date, the ‘deep’ range is usually across about a dozen works.
Given the forward drive of any, but especially this, contemporary collection, and the sheer mass of new work being produced by young artists, do you see some divergence away from this singular emphasis? We add new artists to the collection – actually quite often. We don’t really buy one work by a given artist and call it a day, so acquiring our first example of an artist’s work leads to more, over time. I don’t see this changing anytime soon. It is perhaps the very best part of being a museum that collects the way we do – like a private collector, albeit a very experienced one.
It must also be noted that for all the emphasis on the individual artist’s career production and depth, there are a number of ‘one-offs’ (or two, three, etc.), that seem mere token pieces, or ‘nods’ to one significant period or movement or another (e.g., Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti). We know some of these date from the Broads’ early collecting forays; but obviously these artists are not going to be collected in depth. My understanding is that a number of these artists are intended partially to ‘contextualize’ more substantially represented bodies of work by other artists; but – If the logic of the ‘deep focus’ of the rest of the collection holds, if these holdings do not expand, can we expect them to ‘shrink’? In other words, will some of these artists be sold? The small group of works by early 20th century artists in the collection that you mention are less likely to be shown in the museum and so at some point, a decision will have to be made about them. But for now, for good reason, the Broads enjoy living with all of those works and to me they are a significant aspect of the story of their collecting and their interests. Also it isn’t so much these modernist works that contextualize the later periods covered so deeply by the collection (1980s and later), but more the classic 60s Pop by artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein, added starting in the mid 1990s, that provide a deeper anchor for the collection and are very much on display on the 3rd floor of the museum. Those works are here to stay. I am very proud of the displays now in the museum of so many postwar artists who are seen only in spotty ways elsewhere in LA. In one room at The Broad, you can understand much of what Warhol, or Lichtenstein, were doing with painting in the 1960s, for example.
As we know, there are a number of art works (as many as 500?) that are still held strictly privately by the Broads (dispersed among their homes in Brentwood, Malibu and Manhattan). Will these come into the Broad Museum collection proper after their deaths, or will their sons (or other heirs) take charge of disposing of them? Many, many works from the personal collection are actually on view in the museum now, and Eli has publicly stated for a number of years that all works in the personal collection will join the collection belonging to The Broad Art Foundation after their lifetimes.
Have the Broads sequestered any (or all) of the collection (public or private) to be preserved intact in perpetuity? Or will future directors have a free-hand to acquire and deaccession at will? We intend to follow the guidelines most museums follow in regard to collection management including deaccessioning. There is a general intention that the museum will continue to reflect the content and character of the Broad collection for which the museum was founded.
Like most important contemporary collections, the Broad collection has an international scope. But some have called the collection New York heavy; and of course, many of Eli and Edythe Broad’s private acquisitions were made in New York.
With fresh acquisitions continuing at a fairly brisk pace, can we expect to see more L.A. and California acquisitions? We will continue to expand our holdings in work by artists based in LA, building on the already deep base of works by LA artists. We can supply a list of those artists if that would be helpful; it’s too many for me to write down here.
With respect to the institution’s overall outlook, can we also expect to see more acquisitions coming from Asia and Latin America? I think that is possible, but there is no specific program aiming in that direction right now.
There’s a great deal of ‘new genre’ art being made, published, recorded, performed, and so forth in Los Angeles right now; also new installation work that may or may not be temporary. Are there plans to exhibit, acquire, commission or otherwise foster some of this work? There isn’t a pre-determined plan to do so, and this collection does have a material and object-based focus so far. That said, our fairly recent acquisition of Kjartansson’s The Visitors and Kusama’s Infinity Room signals a shift somewhat in that direction that I hope to have more time to explore now that I am no longer overseeing a museum in construction.
Will the Broad be hosting public programs complementary to its core mission: public screenings and other presentations, scholarly symposia, public affairs programming, music and/or entertainments – along the lines of institutions like neighboring MOCA and the Hammer in Westwood? See our press release about this, from just this week.
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