Los Angeles, all of its four million residents and five hundred or so square miles of acreage and 950 billion dollars of gross domestic product serves as the thrumming, bloody heart of American  cultural and artistic production. On a macro scale, Los Angeles is a gravitational core around which circles the physical ephemera of American desire. On a micro scale, each Los Angeles resident has their own pull, each citizen carrying with them discrete cultures, hopes, loves, and artistic whimsies that compound upon one another in neighborhoods, in families, in businesses, in communities, that all powerfully combine to make Los Angeles the force that it has become in the past century and a half.

‍The Broad’s upcoming exhibition, Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog), celebrates Angelenos on that micro scale: showcasing a roster of different Los Angeles based artists, the exhibition offers varying perspectives on the city, and will be accompanied by a roster of diverse programming aimed to facilitate conversation between the audience, the art, and artists themselves.

Following the exhibition’s public opening on November 18th at the East West Bank Plaza featuring DJs from Chulita Vinyl Club, a Family Weekend Workshop, and a selection of food vendors presented in collaboration with Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC), the Broad will host a slew of weekly events aimed at uplifting the Angeleno community. On Smog Check Thursdays, The Broad will host a number of literary and performing arts lectures and activities on select Thursdays beginning December 14th, including appearances by Miryam Gurba, Michelle Tea, Steven Reigns and others.

In tandem with the select Thursday programming, The Broad will also host a two-part festival-style series on January 27th and March 30th, titled L.A. Intersections. These after-hours events will celebrate music and spoken word scenes borne from Filipinx artists. At the Broad, the Desire and Knowledge and Hope of Los Angeles is like a smog, like a thick blanket of artistic and cultural taste, to be respirated by the individuals and exhaled and recapitulated as the city’s own. Los Angeles is its residents. Its residents are Los Angeles.