Wearing its art on the outside adds curb appeal

No need to go inside LACMA’s new Broad Contemporary Art Museum to see the work of John Baldessari, widely praised for his witty, topsy-turvy installation of the museum’s hit exhibition “Magritte and Contemporary Art.”

The conceptual art pioneer, who’s responsible for LACMA’s updated logo -- note the underlined L and A -- has also designed two enormous banners, created to “communicate with passersby,” according to a museum spokesperson, and break up a two-block stretch of Wilshire Boulevard along the south side of the museum.

Each banner is roughly 51 1/2 feet tall by 54 1/2 feet wide and consists of six printed panels, Baldessari’s office says. The banners’ complementary designs, set against a blue-sky background, reflect a bit of the artist’s sly sense of humor too: One depicts a palm tree, a pencil and a thumb -- “that art school device of measuring,” Baldessari explains; the other shows a hand photographing a palm tree with an iPhone.

The “naturalistic” color design is based on a black-and-white poster image he created for the long-defunct Los Angeles Institute for Contemporary Art, Baldessari says. Text has been added to read “BCAM Born” and “LACMA Grows” on opposite panels.

The banners are envisioned as an ongoing project, with artists and images expected to change yearly.

-- Lynne Heffley