Kareem co-writes "Mycroft Holmes" tells Sherlock's brother's backstory; the norteño band Los Tigres del Norte comes to town; Industrial Musicals; 2,000 year old bronzes of people you know and love; LA's scandalous nuclear cover-up.
Richard Renaldi's 'Touching Strangers' photos touch on human relationships
Three photos: a white Orthodox Jew linking arms with a young black man with dreads; an old bald white man sitting close to a Latina at a diner and holding hands; and a beautiful young black couple - he's looking into the camera, she's about to kiss his cheek.
For each photo, you wonder: what's the story here? Some of the couples look comfortable together, even amorous; other couples look a little uneasy ... but then why are they touching?
( Shalom and Jeff. New York, 2013. Richard Renaldi)
Here's the thing: they were all strangers before the photographer — Richard Renaldi — posed them for the photos in cities across America.
Renaldi's photos get at the relationships between photographers, their subjects, and you and me. And they're in an exhibit called "Touching Strangers" at Loyola Marymount University's Laband Art Gallery through November 22.
(Annalee and Rayqa. San Francisco. 2012 Richard Renaldi)
KPCC photographer Maya Sugarman and I caught up with Renaldi at Venice Beach a couple weeks ago as he was trying to teach LMU photography students the basics of approaching potential subjects on the street.
Listen to the audio (click the arrow in the player above) to hear Renaldi talk about and teach his craft.
NBC4's Joel Grover: How Boeing blocks cleanup of Simi Valley nuclear site
This week, KPCC's Take Two talked with Joel Grover of our media partner NBC4 about his year-long investigation into the near meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Lab in 1959 ... and its continuing aftereffects.
Now, whistleblowers interviewed on camera by NBC4 have recounted how during and after that accident they were ordered to release dangerous radioactive gases into the air above Los Angeles and Ventura counties, often under cover of night, and how their bosses swore them to secrecy. -- NBC4 "LA's Nuclear Secret"
(NBC4's Joel Grover points to the Santa Susana Field Lab from a lookout point at Sage Ranch Park in Simi Valley. Credit: John Rabe)
For Off-Ramp, I went to the Simi Valley with Grover to explore another important aspect of the story: how -- as NBC4 reports -- current owner Boeing has blocked efforts to clean up the site.
The site, which was once run by Rocketdyne, is now owned by Boeing, one of the state's largest employers and a big contributor to state and national politicians, including campaign donations of $29,500 to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, $17,500 to Gov. Jerry Brown, $11,300 to Sen. Barbara Boxer and $4,000 to California Sen. Kevin De Leon, the current Senate President Pro Tempore and the Chairman of the Committee that confirmed Barbara Lee as Director of the DTSC. Even though Boeing didn't own the site when most of the nuclear and rocket testing took place, as current owner — by law — they would be responsible for millions of dollars in cleanup costs with some help from NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, which also used parts of the site. -- -- NBC4 "LA's Nuclear Secret"
Listen to our interview in the audio player above, and get Boeing's full response, as well as 15,000 pages of documents obtained by NBC4, on the website for LA's Nuclear Secret.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explores Sherlock's smarter brother in 'Mycroft Holmes'
KPCC's John Rabe talks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about "Mycroft Holmes," which he wrote with Anna Waterhouse. It tells the backstory of Sherlock Holmes's older brother, and comes out today in hardcover.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Basketball. Trump. Yadda yadda yadda.
You know all that stuff. What's much more interesting is that Kareem has long been a Sherlockian — that is, an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes — since he watched the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies on TV when he was a kid in New York.
"They called it 'Sherlock Holmes Theater,'" Kareem says, "and it was on every Saturday, and I used to watch it with some of my boys uptown in Manhattan. At that point, I thought that Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective ever and I thought he was a real person."
That notion fell away, he says, when he was in high school and read the Holmes story "The Red-Headed League." "Holmes," he says, "really has it solved very early, but you don't realize that until the end, where he has it all together, and he just does it like he's going to lunch."
Kareem sums up Sherlock like this:
"Sherlock is a perfectionist. Sherlock wants to get it done right, he wants the criminals punished, he wants the innocent to walk. And not every legal system can achieve that. And Sherlock is able to see with clarity what has happened and identify the miscreants. And this is what people want to see in their justice system."
Kareem has written 11 books, but this is his first foray into Sherlockian fiction and his first novel, and he and Anna Waterhouse chose Mycroft Holmes as the focus, not his more famous brother Sherlock:
"Mycroft gave us a great big field to play in. He's only mentioned in 6 or 7 of the original stories, and some of the things that Sherlock says of him in those stories are remarkable. He says he's in the British government, but sometimes 'he is the British government.'" And this is a startling thing because at this time, Great Britain is a superpower."
In Conan Doyle's original Holmes stories, Mycroft is in his 40s or 50s, obese, cynical, and a recluse, and moves only between his rooms, his club, and his office.
(Sherlock, Watson, and Mycroft in a Sidney Paget drawing)
But in "Mycroft Holmes," Mycroft is 23, fit, romantic, and adventurous ... and about to be sorely disillusioned: this is his backstory.
Mycroft's Watson is Cyrus Douglas, a black man from Trinidad, which lets Kareem explore two themes: the often ignored racial diversity of Victorian England...
"People see Victorian England as separate from all of the colonies, and in writing our story, we wanted to show how they were connected. People from all over the world that were British subjects ended up in London, and interacted with citizens, and you never see that in any depictions of Victorian London. It's always just white Britishers, and that wasn't the case. There were Chinese people, people from India, Burma, Africa, the Middle East."
... and Kareem's own family background:
"My family came from Trinidad. My grandfather emigrated to New York City in 1917. My grandmother was alive until I was 12 years old. She used to tell stories about Loup Garou (a child-eating demon) and facts about Trinidad. My grandparents went from Belize City to Mobile, Alabama, on a boat, and then took a a train from Mobile to New York City, and my grandmother had no idea of the size of the earth and she kept thinking that the train was going to run off the land and into the ocean because how could a train travel for three days and not hit water ... not ever having left the island of Trinidad. That was always a big joke in the family."
With "Mycroft Holmes," Kareem has been warmly welcomed into the Sherlockian family, and the Baker Street Irregulars, America's preeminent Sherlockian group, were delighted when he made a surprise visit to their annual dinner.
(Kareem at 2015 Baker Street Irregulars meeting. Credit: I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast)
Click the arrow in the audio player above to listen to the (more or less) full version of my interview with Kareem, which includes much we couldn't fit into the radio broadcast.
Brad Bird tells the backstory to 'The Iron Giant,' with a new version screening next week
16 years after its release, it remains one of the most beloved animated features of recent decades, although it flopped at the box office. But like the title character at the end of the film, "The Iron Giant" is coming back!
Director Brad Bird, who has since won Oscars for "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," and directed "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," has created an expanded version of his first feature for Blu-ray release, and Warner Bros. has scheduled special screenings across the country on Wed. Sept. 30 and Sun. Oct. 4. Check out the audio of our interview with him and animation historian Charles Solomon.
Bird told us that back in the 1990s, Warner Bros. let him look over all the projects they had going. "The one that really struck me was Iron Giant," he said, but: "I have a very different direction I want to go with it. I said, 'What if a gun had a soul and didn't want to be a gun?' and Warner Brothers was taken by that and we were off to the races."
When it was released in 1999, "The Iron Giant" delighted critics, animators, parents, and kids with its powerful story, complex characters, and imaginative blending of drawn and computer animation. Joe Morgenstern called it “an instant classic;” Kenneth Turan praised its “refreshing spirit of bemused, non-aggressive hipness that is completely, and delightfully, its own.” Charles Solomon wrote, “Audiences haven’t had animated characters they could care this deeply about since Beauty and the Beast.”
"The Iron Giant" broke fans’ hearts when Warner Bros. botched the release, and the film failed to find the audience it deserved. Bird remembered, "When we test screened the film, and we were basically almost done by the time we finally got an opportunity to test screen it, it got the highest scores [Warner Bros.] had gotten in like 15 or 20 years. And they themselves said 'Jeez, we were not ready for this, and we have not laid the groundwork on it,'" meaning PR, merchandise deals, etc. "The math that was done at the time was that if we opened at $8m that was just enough that word of mouth would've carried us, but we opened to $5m, which was not enough," Bird said.
In retrospect, Bird says he was impatient to release the film, and pushed for a release date even though they weren't ready. But then again, who knows how long Warners would have let it languish on the shelf?
Had there been an Academy Award for Animated Feature then, "The Iron Giant" would have been the odds-on favorite — even against "Toy Story 2."
Find tickets here, and check out the new trailer:
Industrial musicals come to Cinefamily
Even if you're a fan of Broadway, you might have never heard of industrial musicals before. That's not unusual, though: they weren't designed for the public.
Between the mid 1950's up until the 80's large companies would entertain guests and employees at trade shows and conventions with elaborate, Broadway-style musicals. The songs were generally catchy, the production quality usually high and the lyrics and plot revolved almost exclusively around company matters: shoe design, toilet sails, tractors, new cars.
Steve Young — a former writer on the Late Show with Dave Letterman — is one of the world's leading experts on these mostly unheard of productions. He collects souvenir records given out to employees in attendance along with even harder to find video recordings of these musicals. He'll be showing both live on Tuesday, September 29 at Cinefamily on Fairfax.
All kinds of companies put on musicals. Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, even McDonalds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MHDOSQbDJE
Young says companies staged productions like these in hopes they'd improve morale and teach its salesforce about new products in a fun, catchy way. But how do you measure that? "I don't know how you really make that a solid connection," says Young. "It seems very anecdotal."
For the performers and writers, though, there was no question: an up and coming actor could make much more money in a traveling performance paid for by Kellogg than on Broadway proper. Many writers cut their teeth in these shows before going on to successful careers—Young has found industrial musicals written by John Kander and Fred Ebb (of "Cabaret") and a Ford tractor show penned by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, who'd later go on to write "Fiddler on the Roof."
The practice petered out by the mid-1980's and, with very few exceptions, remains a relic. Young believes these musicals died out partly because musicals in general became less popular, but they were a sign of a different corporate culture in America.
"It really was quite an innocent time," says Young. "There was this real feeling for quite a while of 'Well, we're all pulling together in the same direction. If we all do great, we all win together.' And there was a feeling among many of these companies that you're gonna come back to the show every year, for many years. Because you're spending your career with us."
Industrial Musicals comes to the Cinefamily on Tuesday, September 29 at 7:30pm. Eleni Mandell performs live and Germs drummer Don Bolles will DJ. For tickets and more info, check Cinefamily's website.
Song of the week: "Dungeon Dropper" by Wand
This week's Off-Ramp song of the week comes from a Los Angeles band on its way up: Wand. Fronted by Northeast Los Angeles' Cory Hanson, Wand has put our three albums in the last year, counting their upcoming "1000 Days," which comes out September 25 on Drag City.
"Dungeon Dropper" is the single off the new record. Here's the video for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_MSyIV-HDc
Wand plays Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28 at the Echo in Los Angeles.
Sketches with wolves: Artist Mike Sheehan visits Wolf Mountain Sanctuary
When Wolf Mountain Sanctuary, a place I’d never heard of before, popped up on my Facebook page one day, I looked to see where it was. Turns out, it’s been out in the Lucerne Valley desert for almost 30 years. I don’t know how I’ve missed it all this time.
I drove around the backside of Big Bear and dropped down from the forest into the desert. Lucerne Valley is a character unto itself.
It really feels like the middle of nowhere, just like the local cafe proclaims on their T-shirts. I like the middle of nowhere.
I drove down a dirt road off the main highway with squirrels darting across it. Jake, one of the caretakers, opened the gate. I met Tonya Littlewolf, the half-Apache, half-Sicilian founder of Wolf Mountain, and the first thing she did was give me a present: A fold-up chair with wolves printed on it. Perfect for sketching.
I told her the chance way Wolf Mountain had landed on my radar. She replied, “it was supposed to be.”
Tonya is known as “Mama Wolf." She’s been called that, she says, since she was small. Her grandfather had a rescue. They helped “anything that got hurt in the wild. We had wolves, all the way to squirrels, cougars, bobcats. And then we let ‘em run free. Because they got better and we relocated them back. My grandfather said that was my summons in life. I was to take care of and protect the wolf.”
She has been around them since she was 2. She believes in their healing power and has lots of stories of them helping people, including soldiers with PTSD.
We talked for a while. I found out that some of the wolves had been filmed for the Twilight movies, and found out some of their individual personality quirks. Then we went outside to see the wolves — they are amazing.
Some visitors were there to take a tour, so Holan came out to hang with them. He’s sort of the Wolf Mountain greeter. He’s really friendly and seems to like the attention. I hung out with him after — he climbed all over me checking me out. I think I passed his inspection.
(Mike Sheehan and Holan. Credit: Tonya Littlewolf)
Wolves seem to always be fighting so many misconceptions about them, which has bred an irrational hatred of them in some places. But they are amazingly complex social animals, and beautiful.
On the second day, all the wolves howled (check out the audio in the player above) when I arrived in the morning. Prophet, a more recent arrival, growled at me for some reason. I think I might have been a little early for him.
I went and hung out with Holan. I got some color sketches of him as he walked by. Later in the day I found out Prophet could be a ham, and he would sit and pose for a while then walk around, but he came back every now and then and hit his pose again. It felt a little like a conversation.
That’s when it gets interesting, when it’s quiet and they get comfortable with me being there. We’d both sit and look at each other trying to figure each other out. At least I was; Prophet might have already figured me out.
Why are the wolves here? Some are failed pets and illegal breeding. Some come from the movie industry. Some have sad stories.
Balto has the manner of a wolf that hasn’t been treated very well. He was malnourished, dehydrated, stressed and had worms when he got here. He was skittish when I held my palm out offering him some treats. He finally took them, but quickly backed off to eat them. Tonya spends a lot of time out here with him and all the wolves. She is teaching Balto that some people actually love him.
I would ask Tonya each one's story, then be sorry I asked. But she gives them lots of love and they love her back. She also lectures at various organizations. A lot of her education efforts are teaching people that wolves are not pets, and that they are not villains — that they should be wild.
She spends a lot of her day raising money, a constant battle. It costs over $1,500 in red meat and $800 in chicken every week, and that's just some of the food costs. She has two wolves now that need to be fixed, and then there are other costs involved.
Wolf Mountain is completely reliant on donations and tours. There is also the effort to move them to Colorado, where there is more land and the climate is more to the wolves' liking.
She said she wanted to be outside with the wolves whenever she was in the office, and always made time go out and sit with them. I went out one day with her — she wanted me to see how peaceful it was. I did have to calm down as I entered their space, and sit on the ground so I didn't seem like a threat. It is truly amazing to see their movements and get to interact with them.
I went Friday for my last visit. I had gotten used to seeing them every day, and I was a little sad that I wouldn’t be sitting with them anymore. I was starting to see their distinct personalities. It's funny how fast you can feel bonded to something — but I have a feeling I’ll see them again soon.
Power, pathos, and a punch-drunk boxer: Meet the bronze people at The Getty Center
"They're usually shown in splendid isolation. But in antiquity, they were much more common, and they populated city squares, sanctuaries, they spoke to each other, people could interact with them. And our idea was, why don't we bring them together, and show them together? Many of these statues haven't seen each other since they left the workshop." -- Getty curator Ken Lapatin
Not too long before Bette Midler and her young pals discovered the place, I’d sweat off many an overindulgent lunch at New York’s famed Luxor steam baths. Most of the men there were bulging, sagging and ancient … but one stood out.
He was former welterweight contender named Irv. He had a perfect boxer physique, but he’d slowed to the point where getting up and sitting down were a bit problematic.
While other bathers dozed torpid under their sheets in the steam room, Irv held court on the Sweet Science of boxing to his audience of obese senior accountants and jewelry merchants. “Keep your fists up, keep moving, and don’t get hit.” ... Advice he hadn’t taken a couple of times, according to his broken nose and busted left cheek.
(Marc Haefele's Irv: “The Terme Boxer” (detail). Photo © Vanni Archive / Art Resource, NY)
Imagine my surprise when Irv turned up at the Getty Center the other day, complete with broken nose and busted cheek … and stark naked in a full beard. But this Irv was 2,000 years old, in blackened bronze instead of steam bath pink. And he was a statue. Still, I wanted to say, “Irv, how you been all these years?”
You want to ask that of most of the dozens of Bronze people inhabiting the Getty Center’s exhibition hall in "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World," on display through October. They’re from what you might well call the Golden Age of Bronze.
Never again in human history would this metal sculpture be so superbly practiced over such a wide area, from present day Yemen to what is now Portugal. They’re all from the Hellenistic period—spanning from Alexander the Great in about 330 BC to the fall of Cleopatra in 31 BC. That’s the long period when Greece declined from being a military to a cultural power, a power of art and learning, exporting painting and poetry, literature, drama and, yes, sculpture all over the known and even the so-called unknown worlds — through India to what is now Pakistan.
How many bronze Irvs and Irmas there were then no one knows. Maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. They lined the streets of Mediterranean cities and the ports of the Arabian Sea. The conquering Romans bought them by the shipload. They were the way in which ancient urban culture celebrated itself — representing its heroes, gods and goddesses, leaders and tradesmen, children and even animals, everywhere there was public and even private space. Most of these bronzes were melted down for coins and cooking pots, or otherwise destroyed, and now scarcely 200 are known to survive. Fully fifty of these are now at the Getty Center.
We tend to idealize the sculpture of Greece’s great era, from 500-350 BC. But these works were themselves idealizations, not based on reality. It was the Hellenistic Era that followed that invented portraiture: its images looked like actual people, with human expressions, peculiarities, even flaws. Like Irv the Boxer’s broken nose.
The statues that venerate leaders, heroes and gods — particularly the athletes called apoxymenos — the naked men with the perfect hair — have ordinary, if handsome, faces. But some of the other faces, especially those whose glass and jeweled simulated eyes survive, are so alive that they’re unnerving to look at. Because they stare back at you with expressions that range from the totally involved to the utterly deranged. Take that head of a man from Delos, for instance, who seems astonished just to see you.
(Portrait of a Man, 300-200 B.C., bronze, copper, glass, and stone. Image © Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund)
These statues at the Getty stir stories in the viewers’ mind. Who’s the naked boy riding the lion? That spoiled-looking teenager? Why does that armored Minerva seem to be smiling at some secret?
And how can you be sharing the emotions of someone gone from the earth for over 2,000 years? Ah, but you do.
The greatness of most of these pieces is their molding into forever the rages, delights, and puzzlements of a period so far gone from us. And yet as close as Irv the punch-drunk boxer.
Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, is at the Getty Center through November 1, 2015. Listen to the bonus audio to hear John Rabe's interview with the Getty Museum curator Kenneth Lapatin, who curated the show with colleague Jens Daehner.
Los Tigres del Norte frontman Jorge Hernandez on the band's almost 50-year career
Los Tigres del Norte, one of Mexico's biggest and longest running bands, will perform at the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge on Thursday, Oct. 1. Formed in 1967, Los Tigres have released dozens of albums, sold millions of records and toured worldwide.
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talked with with Jorge Hernandez, the band's singer and accordionist, and his son, Jorge Jr about the band's history, their relationship with fans and the kind of songs they play: corridos.
On the corrido's history and significance in Mexico
Jorge Hernandez, Jr.: It's an early form of oral tradition. Initially, it was a way that the news or current events, or events from town to town were passed on. But now, what the band tries to do is create a movie in three-and-a-half minutes. It has a beginning, it has a climax and it has an end. And I think that's what allows them to connect with their fans and their community. Because they're taking real life events — you have the early immigrant that came and crossed the border in the '70s and '80s, with songs like "Vivan los Mojados."
As you transition, you have songs like "La Jaula de Oro," which talks about a father who feels like he's encaged. The song's called "The Golden Cage" [in English]. He feels like he can't do anything, even though he came here to look for an opportunity — and that standoff between him and his son in that particular song. He asks his son: Do you want to [go back to] Mexico? And his son responds [in English] "I don't want to go back to Mexico. No way, Dad."
On playing concerts on both sides of the border
Jorge Hernandez, Sr.: Yes. There's a lot of difference — even if we play for a lot of Mexican people here in the United States. Over there in Mexico they have more liberty to yell, to have fun. Here it's a little more restricted. The feeling is different. When you come out, the people are more quiet than Mexico. They have fun, but in a different way.
I think it's the way this country is — we have the discipline, I guess.
On Los Tigres' long history of performing all-request shows
Jorge Hernandez, Sr.: We play two or three songs at the beginning, and then after, we introduce ourselves. And then we start the requests — they send little papers, they put some signs — they put the name of the song they want. We just play what the people request. Not what I want.
On the iconic, unique suits Los Tigres del Norte perform in, designed by Manuel Couture in Nashville
Jorge Hernandez, Sr.: We have a lot of suits from him, that he made for us. Manuel has been with us for a long, long time. It's like a country-western suit.
I'm just gonna put it this way: When you go to the war, you take your rifle. If you're gonna fight and you don't take your rifle, you'll feel empty. When you're on the stage, and you got a nice outfit, and you know the people are going to look at you — it makes you feel very secure in what you're doing.
If it looks good, it doesn't matter how much it costs.
On the popularity of Los Tigres del Norte
Jorge Hernandez, Jr.: I think it comes back their connection with their people. I think them being first generation immigrants, and going through those life experiences of coming here, being here undocumented, establishing their lives... that created that foundation. Not only for them, but everybody who came along with them and listened to their music.
For us, going out to a family dinner, it's very common for us to have people come up to the table and want to say hi to my dad, to my uncles, and just say "thank you for being our voice."
They're almost at five decades. So they've truly had the career of the Rolling Stones. Their tour and work ethic is unparalleled. They tour 10 months a year, and it's been that way ever since I could remember. I think other families have seen Los Tigres as our voice. And that transcends generations.
100k people have reserved tickets to see The Broad, LA's newest museum
This Sunday, L.A.'s newest art museum, The Broad, opens to the public, just across the street from Disney Hall. For the first time, the public can see the blue-chip art collection of one of the city's biggest philanthropists in one place. Admission is free, and so far, more than 100,000 people have gone online for a free ticket.
The media was offered a sneak preview Wednesday. I went so I could give you a sense of what to expect and what to watch for in the future. But the story of The Broad actually begins more than 40 years ago when a young married couple — homebuilding mogul Eli Broad and his wife Edythe — were out visiting.
"We had a good friend who had a beautiful art collection," Edythe says. "And we were at his house and Eli said to him, 'My wife likes this and I don't know why.'"
Edythe Broad says Eli started reading up on art, they started buying it, and soon their house was filled … so they started a foundation to lend their art to museums. The Broad Foundation was run by the woman who became the $140-million museum's first director, Joanne Heyler.
At the press event, Heyler sought to establish the new museum's bona fides: "It's true that we have an extraordinary new architectural landmark of a home. It's true that we're offering the collection to the public for free admission. We're embarking on a profound new beginning. But the Broad collection has had a public purpose for over 30 years."
Jori Finkel, a reporter who covers art for The New York Times, says the big question about The Broad is "whether the collection will feel alive. We don't want this to be a portrait of a collector who has finished building his collection."
In her remarks at the press opening, museum director and chief curator Joanne Hyler did address Finkel's concern, saying the 2,000 work collection — by Post-War and Contemporary artists like Jeff Koons, Cy Twombley, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger — is growing by an average of one piece every week.
And if current events are any indication, it'll keep on growing. At the press opening, Broad said, "I'm often asked why it's important for people to have access to contemporary art. The answer is simple: contemporary art is the art of our time. It reflects an important social, political, and cultural commentary on the world in which we live." Then he referred to Ferguson, feminism and Elvis … all represented in the first exhibit of 250 works from the Broad collection.
Jon Regardie, Off-Ramp commentator and executive editor of the Los Angeles Downtown News, says it's a big day for L.A.: "This is the biggest thing to hit downtown in a dozen years. You have to go back to the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall to find something as big. There was a mini-bump about five years ago with the opening of the Ralph's supermarket, but some would say this is bigger," he laughs. It'll draw international attention to downtown.
When the doors finally open to the public Sunday, you should look for a tall gray-haired man named Ric Scofidio, who's with the architecture firm that designed the building with its criss-cross exoskeleton, amusement park escalator, peekaboo art vault and main gallery floor bathed in wonderful natural light. The art — especially some huge pieces, like Kara Walker's full wall-size silhouettes of U.S. slavery scenes — benefits from all the room it's given to breathe.
If you're watching for Scofidio, he's watching for you. "I really want to come back on Sunday," he said Wednesday, "when the public is here. That will tell me much more about how the building is used."
Let's give the last word to the man whose name is on the building. I asked Eli Broad how he thought the new building was working with his art. "It works exceptionally well. Better than anything we deserved."