Broad Is Buyer of Mark Bradford "Helter Skelter"

The L.A. Times is reporting that the Broad was the buyer of Mark Bradford's Helter Skelter I, auctioned at Philips London March 8 for $12 million. At 34 feet wide, it's one of Bradford's largest collage-paintings, and the auction price was described as the highest ever for a living African-American. The sale also drew attention because of the seller, tennis star John McEnroe. McEnroe had said he hoped Helter Skelter would go to a museum.

Helter Skelter I as installed in John McEnroe's New York home

Also acquired by the Broad in the past year are Sam Francis' Why Then Opened II, 1962-63 (another auction purchase, for $3.8 million); Julie Mehretu's Congress (2003); the institition's first Kerry James Marshall painting and its umpteenth Jeff Koons sculpture; Sherrie Levine's After Russell Lee 1-60, a 2016 work reproducing a 1940 series of color photographs of Pie Town, N.M., by FSA photographer Lee; and what may be the biggest news for some, a second Yayoi Kusama infinity room, Longing for Eternity (2017). Evidently the Broad is betting that this infinity-eternity thing has legs.