Los Angeles County Museum on Fire takes on the logic behind Eli Broad’s rallying cry that art should be on display but not in storage:
Broad has long struck the quasi-populist note that evil, elitist museum directors are scheming to put art (Broad’s art!) in storage. He’s used this versatile talking point to justify yanking his collection from BCAM and building yet another museum to house it. (The new museum will reportedly be smaller than BCAM: Broad is a man of many paradoxes.) Broad talks as if everything in his 2000-piece collection can and must eventually be on permanent view. The art that’s not in his planned museum will be lent out, notwithstanding the fact that this would require the equivalent of about ten Whitney Museums, sitting empty out in the hinterlands. bThe bottom line is that there is more art than museum space to show it. Thus museum installations, particularly of contemporary art, are ever-changing and (to use the fashionable term) “curated.” What’s so bad about that?
The Puzzling Paradox of Broad’s Basement (Los Angeles County Museum on Fire)
