Eli Broad’s advice to budding art collectors: Go slow

Here’s Eli and Edythe Broad’s advice to budding, young art collectors: take your time, do the research, don’t rush to buy.

“You got to invest time, it’s not just about money,” Eli Broad said this week at a talk for the Los Angeles Public Library’s ALOUD series. “It’s about meeting new artists -- at MFA shows, at universities -- and it’s about getting all the publications and going to museums.”

“Spend time looking, go to galleries, ask questions,” Edythe said.

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“Don’t be in a hurry to buy anything. It should be fun,” Eli added.

The evening was the inaugural event of a new art-focused lecture series, “The Un-Private Collection,” that the art patrons -- whose Broad museum opens on Grand Avenue in late 2014 -- have launched.

It will feature contemporary artists whose work is in the Broad museum’s collection in conversation with other artists, art scholars and art world figures as well as novelists, filmmakers and musicians.

Ed Patuto, the museum’s director of audience engagement since May, is curating and steering the new lecture series.

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“It’s an opportunity for the public to hear from the artists in the collection -- what inspired them, what they were thinking, what their creative process is,” he said. “So that when visitors come to see the works, they’ll have a much richer experience and deeper understanding.”

For Thursday’s premiere, held in the library’s Mark Taper Auditorium, the Broads appeared on stage with Joanne Heyler, chief curator and director of the new museum. Inge Reist, director of the Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting, moderated the discussion about art collecting.

The next “Un-Private Collection” talk, on Nov. 23 at the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts downtown, will feature artist Mark Bradford in conversation with Katy Siegel, chief curator of the Hunter College Galleries. They’ll be discussing Robert Rauschenberg’s influence on Bradford as well as the role of “the artist as citizen,” Patuto said.

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The Dec. 11 talk, at the library as part of ALOUD, will feature Shirin Neshat, an Iranian filmmaker and photographer. She’ll appear in conversation with Christy MacLear, executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

As Reist wrapped up Thursday evening’s debut discussion, Eli Broad noted that it was Edythe who “was the first collector in the family.”

“I was so pleased when Eli became interested in it,” Edythe said, “because the acquisition budget went up!”

The schedule of upcoming talks is posted on the Broad Foundation’s website.

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Twitter: @debvankin