The Broad’s next free exhibition confronts mass media and memory

Long before endless scrolling offered us up-to-the-minute sociopolitical snapshots, we turned to all sorts of books, newspapers, pamphlets and photos to reflect on our collective mood—and so too did plenty of fine artists, who created works in response to the issues of their day.

In that spirit, the Broad’s next free exhibition will examine how mass media has shaped history and our collective memories of major events. “Has the myth been shattered,” which opens inside the Los Angeles museum’s ground-floor galleries on November 21, 2026 and runs through April 4, 2027, includes era-spanning timely pieces from 14 contemporary artists that both take mass media to task and hold up its potential for resistance.

The Downtown L.A. institution typically alternates between two types of exhibitions on its first floor: Specially ticketed artist-specific ones like the Yoko Ono retrospective currently on view, and free group shows that draw from the museum’s own collection. “Has the myth been shattered” falls into that latter camp. (The upstairs galleries—as well as downstairs’ Infinity Mirrored Room—are always free to visit.)

The show borrows its title from Guadalupe Rosales’s Has the myth been shattered, a full-length two-way mirror trimmed with color-changing LEDs that appear to extend into the abyss. At eye level, it pointedly suspends the front page of a copy of the Los Angeles Times from the days following the 1992 L.A. Uprising that wondered—with doses of both optimism and pessimism—whether the unrest would force people to meaningfully confront and correct L.A.’s ignored inequities.

Rosales’s work, a recent acquisition, is among the dozen-plus that’ll be on view at the Broad for the very first time, exhibited alongside ones from figures familiar to the museum’s upstairs galleries, including Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon and Andy Warhol.

“The Broad collection has always supported artists who engage provocatively with the deepest and most highly charged subjects of their moment,” said the Broad’s founding director and president, Joanne Heyler, in a statement. “This exhibition spans decades of collection artists asking questions about injustices that persist in American life and offers a glimpse of how the collection is evolving.”

A significant share of the exhibition’s pieces were made in the 1980s and ’90s, when people read things primarily on paper and not screens—so print media plays a pretty major role in these meditations on race, history and belonging. But more recent works in the show also mine these tangible relics for meaning. Take Hank Willis Thomas’s 2018 piece Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot, which spotlights a 13-page pamphlet from 1968 with instructions for how Black residents can withstand a military occupation; when exposed to a flash, the retroflective vinyl reveals photographs of the National Guard’s nine-month occupation of Wilmington, Delaware. Or Mickalene Thomas’s The Charnel House (Resist #5), a 2021 piece that fills the contours of Picasso’s The Charnel House, an unfinished painting from World War II, with archival photos and signs from the civil rights and Black Lives Matter movements. 

“My hope is that this presentation not only contends with issues of our political and media landscape but also illuminates how much power is embedded in collective action and socially engaged art making,” said Jen Vanegas Rocha, the exhibition’s curator. “These artists are not simply reflecting the world as it is. They’re architects of better futures, carving out space for the public to consider the possibilities within and against the systems they examine.” 

Other works on display include portraits of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller painted by Leon Golub just after the end of the Vietnam War, a tangle of media-crafting conveyor belts in Mark Tansey’s Matrix and additional works from Richard Artschwager, Sue Coe, Robert Longo, Goshka Macuga, Thomas Ruff and David Wojnarowicz.

Access to “Has the myth been shattered” is included with a free general admission ticket. Reservations will be available in the fall. (Psst: When you visit, make sure to peek at the museum’s under-construction expansion.)