This fall, The Broad presents Robert Therrien: This is a Story, the largest museum exhibition of the late artist’s widely-adored work to date, on view November 22, 2025 to April 5, 2026. Therrien’s meditations on scale and material are a deeply influential and well-known approach within the field of contemporary sculpture, significant to The Broad’s own identity as a museum, and long admired by visitors of all ages. The installation will showcase Therrien’s personal vocabulary of images and symbols—from enormous tables, chairs, and dishes, to intimate drawings of snowmen, birds, and chapels—as they become a language of continuous creation and transformation for the artist over time. Featuring more than 120 works spanning five decades, the exhibition offers unprecedented access to the artist’s exploration of...
This fall, The Broad presents Robert Therrien: This is a Story, the largest museum exhibition of the late artist’s widely-adored work to date, on view November 22, 2025 to April 5, 2026. Therrien’s meditations on scale and material are a deeply influential and well-known approach within the field of contemporary sculpture, significant to The Broad’s own identity as a museum, and long admired by visitors of all ages. The installation will showcase Therrien’s personal vocabulary of images and symbols—from enormous tables, chairs, and dishes, to intimate drawings of snowmen, birds, and chapels—as they become a language of continuous creation and transformation for the artist over time. Featuring more than 120 works spanning five decades, the exhibition offers unprecedented access to the artist’s exploration of scale, memory, and perception, just miles from the downtown Los Angeles home and studio space he operated out of for close to thirty years beginning in 1990. Many of the works on view, including those created just before Therrien’s untimely death in 2019, have never been featured in museum exhibitions and will offer new avenues of understanding his practice.
"Tables you could walk under, stacks of dishes as tall as columns, chairs that, seen from below, resemble towers. . . the artist behind that wonderland is Robert Therrien."
— Giorgia Aprosio, Domus
Press Highlights
Los Angeles Times
"A quintessential artist’s artist … this should be the most compelling museum solo show of the season."
Time Out
Even more oversized tables and chairs are coming to The Broad
Domus
"Tables you could walk under, stacks of dishes as tall as columns, chairs that, seen from below, resemble towers. . .the artist behind that wonderland is Robert Therrien (1947–2019), the American sculptor who transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary, childhood into architecture, and the everyday into vertigo."
Hyperallergic
15 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This Fall
Los Angeles Times
"Therrien is famous for his large-scale sculptures—towering stacks of vertigo-inducing dishes, giant beards, enormous folding chairs and oversized pots and pans in humongous cupboards—but each piece is a 'trap door. . .you may think you’ve got it right away and then the floor falls out,' says curator Ed Schad"
More By Robert Therrien
A fan favorite since The Broad first opened, Under The Table (1994)—the very first artwork installed at the museum—has drawn visitors from around the world, sparking childhood memories of hiding beneath a table. While Under The Table will continue to be free to view as part of general admission, Robert Therrien: This Is a Story expands the world of everyday objects made extraordinary, with even more towering tables, oversized plates, and whimsical dishes to explore.
Highlighted Artwork
Photos by Joshua White/JWPictures.com