The brand new Broad Museum is the hottest ticket in town. This beautiful, light-filled space, a gift to Los Angeles from billionaire collector-philanthropists Edythe and Eli Broad, houses more than 2,000 paintings, photos and sculptures by such artists as Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, Sam Francis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman and Chuck Close. And although the dearth of female artists and artists of color gave me pause, (194 artists, 96% white, 86% male, according to the latest Guerrilla Girls statistics) I have high hopes that will be rectified in the near future.
Still, the art was great. But the people watching was even better. When I’m surrounded by art, all I want to do is “make art.” Here’s my take on the Broad.
Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, The New York Times, Petrichor, The MacGuffin, Plume, Tinderbox, Diode, Nashville Review, Wide Awake, Poets of Los Angeles, Pirene’s Fountain, Cleaver, Glass, Rust + Moth, Duende, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Her books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen & other heart stab poems (Sybaritic Press, 2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here, (2017), and The Dead Kid Poems, (2019), and Junkie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), an autobiographical chapbook chronicling Alexis’s first, disastrous marriage. She’s been published in over 60 anthologies, including the best-selling Nasty Women Poets (Lost Horse Press, 2017), Terrapin Books’ A Constellation of Kisses, (2019),and Antologia di poesia femminile americana contemporanea, (Edizioni Ensemble, Italia, 2018). Her photographs have been published worldwide, including the covers of Witness, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Heyday, and Pithead Chapel, and a spread in River Styx. A multiple Pushcart Prize, Best Short Fiction, and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis has been poetry editor of Cultural Weekly since late 2012. She and her husband live 20 miles outside of downtown L.A., in a small beach community overlooking the Pacific. They have an extraordinary view.