The Broad Museum

Murakami’s expansive artistic universe will be on view in Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, the artist’s first solo exhibition at The Broad.

The exhibition, which includes all of Murakami’s works in the Broad collection and key loans, features 18 works created throughout his career and new immersive environments developed in tandem with the artist and his studio, Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd.

In these works, spanning sculpture, painting, wallpaper, and immersive installations, the artist explores subject matter such as globalization, postwar Japan, pop culture, and religious iconography.

Among the works presented are two of the artist’s monumental paintings, the 32-foot-wide 100 Arhats (2013) and the 82-foot-wide In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow (2014), and the 1999 sculpture DOB in the Strange Forest (Blue DOB) that features Murakami’s iconic anime-inspired character Mr. DOB.

Featuring over twenty artists, the special exhibition This Is Not America’s Flag spotlights the myriad ways artists explore the symbol of the flag of the United States of America, underscoring its vast, divergent, and complex meanings.

Titled after Alfredo Jaar’s iconic 1987 work, A Logo for America, This Is Not America’s Flag provides a critical discourse on the symbol’s meaning, the complexity and contradictions of contemporary national identity, and artists as active citizens.

The exhibition was developed conceptually in the summer of 2020 during the groundswell of activism for racial justice in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and was inspired by two works in the Broad collection, Flag (1967) by Jasper Johns and African-American Flag (1990) by David Hammons.

An in-depth installation of Roy Lichtenstein, opening May 26, 2021, features 22 artworks, with nearly half on view for the first time, including Purist Still Life (1975), Female Figure (1979), Two Paintings: Radiator and Folded Sheets (1984), and Nude with Pyramid (1994).

An in-depth installation of Jean-Michel Basquiat, opening May 26, 2021, features all 13 works by the artist in the Broad collection, including three works on view for the first time at The Broad: Santo 2 (1982), Deaf (1984), and Wicker (1984).

An in-depth installation of Andy Warhol, opening May 26, 2021, features 26 works (11 on view for the first time at The Broad), including Mao (1973), 40 Gold Marilyns (1980), and a major new acquisition, Liz [Early Colored Liz] (1963).

Liz [Early Colored Liz] is a celebrated work featuring a silkscreened image of Elizabeth Taylor, who represented both celebrity and beauty as well as tragedy for the artist.

An in-depth installation of Kara Walker, opening May 26, 2021, features all ten artworks by the artist in the Broad collection, including six on view for the first time at The Broad.

The Broad will debut two new acquisitions by Walker. Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions (2004) is the artist's first video work, and The White Power ‘Gin / Machine to Harvest the Nativist Instinct for Beneficial Uses to Border Crossers Everywhere (2019) is a work on paper that includes a large triptych and a series of 12 small drawings.

In The White Power ‘Gin / Machine to Harvest the Nativist Instinct for Beneficial Uses to Border Crossers Everywhere, Walker develops a narrative of a laboratory where white bodies are drained of racist thinking; their racism is harvested and repurposed as energy to benefit “Border Crossers Everywhere.”