DRFTRS: Sterling Ruby and Ed Schad in Conversation (Sold Out)
Overview
Join Ed Schad, Curator and Publications Manager at The Broad, in conversation with Broad collection artist Sterling Ruby, one of the most versatile and acute observers of our time. Renowned for his sustained engagement with the complexities of contemporary life, Ruby’s practice excavates cultural and historical lineages through an exhaustive range of mediums.
The Broad and Phaidon come together for a dual celebration—30 years of Phaidon’s Contemporary Artists Series and 10 years of The Broad. Join us for an exclusive conversation and a sneak peek of a newly commissioned limited-edition print by Ruby, entitled DRFTRS (Daisy Ghost). The program will feature welcome remarks by Simon Hunegs, Editor at Phaidon.
From 8–9 pm after the event, The Shop at The Broad will offer a limited number of signed Sterling Ruby’s monographs for purchase.
Image credits (from left to right clockwise): Exhibition view, Supermax 2008, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2008. © Sterling Ruby; Sterling Ruby by Melanie Schiff; Sterling Ruby catalogue
Tickets include same-day access to The Broad’s rotating third floor galleries until the event start time. The museum closes at 8 pm on Thursdays; the galleries will be closed when the event ends. Please plan your visit accordingly. Free tickets do not guarantee access to the event, and seating is on a first come, first served basis. Late seating may not be accommodated.
The museum’s first floor galleries will be closed for installation. Tickets to this event do not include access to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013), and must be booked separately.
To learn more and plan your trip, visit Know Before You Go & FAQ. Visitor policies are subject to change.
Sold outSchedule
Bios
Sterling Ruby
Sterling Ruby (American/Dutch, b. 1972) is a Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist whose expansive practice includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, collage, video, and installation. After earning a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Ruby developed a visual language rooted in material excess, aesthetic critique, and subcultural forms—exploring themes of transformation, containment, and decay.
Born on an American military base in Bitburg, Germany to a Dutch mother and American father, Ruby was raised in Pennsylvania. His unique perspective is deeply informed by the traditional arts and crafts with which he grew up, and Southern California’s urban-industrial landscape. Often organized into series, Ruby’s work compiles fragments and gestures drawn from his surroundings and personal experience into reflections on cultural tensions and the human condition.
Ruby’s works are held in premier museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; MCA Chicago; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Photo by Melanie Schiff
Ed Schad
Ed Schad is Curator and Publications Manager at The Broad in Los Angeles. Currently, he is working to organize the exhibition, Robert Therrien: This is a Story, to open at The Broad on November 22, 2025. In 2024, he curated the exhibition Mickalene Thomas: All About Love in partnership with The Hayward in London and The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. In 2022, he curated the survey, William Kentridge: In Praise of Shadows, as well as edited and wrote the book to accompany the exhibition. He previously organized and produced catalogues for the large-scale exhibitions Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow and Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again. He also curated Carlos Cruz-Diez's Couleur Additive, co-curated a trilogy of group exhibitions Creature, Oracle, and A Journey that Wasn't, and was the host-curator of Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth co-organized by The Broad and the Royal Academy of London. He is the editor in chief of 50 Artists: Highlights of the Broad Collection, and he is the managing editor of The Broad Collection; The Broad: An Art Museum Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro; The Broad: Art and Architecture; and Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life, all published by Delmonico Prestel. Schad’s writing has been included in Art Review, Frieze, Modern Painters, Flash Art, The Brooklyn Rail, L.A. Weekly, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.