Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Eli Broad's Basel Bash


Last week, one of the world's richest art collectors, Eli Broad, and his wife, hosted an extravagant party in honor of this year's Art Basel. The event took place in their California home, which could easily be mistaken for a contemporary art museum or gallery, with their extensive art collection. The Broads' collection is astonishing, and guests mingled and ate, all the while surrounded by some of the best art made over the past 50 years.

W Magazine wrote about the party:
Almost everything about a recent dinner at Eli Broad’s Los Angeles home in honor of the 40th anniversary of Art Basel was outsize, starting with the estate itself. Visitors approached the mansion—designed in part by Frank Gehry—through a private sculpture park, then entered a sitting room the size of a hotel lobby before descending a stairway into a series of double-height galleries. “This is bigger than the Gagosian Gallery,” said fashion-world fixture Richard Buckley as he arrived at the first subterranean white cube, with its cranelike Calder sculpture and pair of giant Chuck Close portraits. A moment later Ann Philbin, director of UCLA’s Hammer Museum, summed up the installation with a wry understatement: “Not bad,” she said, in a tone that meant something more like, Can you believe? ...

keep reading the W Magazine story about the Broad Basel party