Broad museum to show more than 250 works in inaugural display

When the Broad museum in downtown Los Angeles officially opens on Sept. 20, visitors will be treated to a selection of more than 250 works of contemporary art culled from the private collection of founders Eli and Edythe Broad, museum officials will announce on Friday.

Though many of the pieces have been seen in public before, this will be the most in-depth display of art from the 2,000-piece collection, spotlighting more than 60 artists.

Among the larger pieces that will be on view for the inaugural installation will be Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Room -- The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away,” a celestial light installation; and an 82-foot long Takashi Murakami painting inspired by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

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Other large-scale work will include “The Visitors,” a 360-degree video projection piece by artist Ragnar Kjartansson, and “Under the Table,” Robert Therrien’s super-sized dining table set that dwarfs visitors.

Works by Jeff Koons will be on view -- including his sculpture “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” -- as well as pieces by Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Roy Lichtenstein, John Baldessari, Mark Bradford, Kara Walker and Barbara Kruger.

One of the more topical pieces to be on display will be artist Robert Longo’s 2014 charcoal drawing of a police protest in Ferguson, Mo. The museum will also display Julie Mehretu’s “Cairo,” an ink-and-acrylic representation of the Egyptian capital during the turbulence of the Arab Spring.

A spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation said the exact number of pieces that will be on display will be determined at a later date. Founding director Joanne Heyler is curating the inaugural installation.

Officials said that the galleries on the museum’s first floor will focus almost exclusively on the collection’s most recent artworks, from 2000 to the present -- many of which will have their debut showing in L.A.

The three-story museum features 50,000 square feet of exhibition space on two floors.

Other highlights will include Anselm Kiefer’s World War II-themed “Deutschlands Geisteshelden,” which will be displayed in relationship with multiples by German artist Joseph Beuys, selected from the Broad’s 570-work Beuys multiples collection.

The Broad’s collection is made up of pieces from the Broad Art Foundation and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, which together hold 2,000 works of postwar and contemporary art.

The new museum will offer free admission to the general public.

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT

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