Colorful Crosswalks in Downtown LA

The intersection at 2nd and Grand in downtown Los Angeles sprang to life over the Labor Day weekend, boasting a colorful installation by Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, titled "Couler Additive." Commissioned by the Broad Museum as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (an ambitious multi-venue exploration of Latin American and Latino art currently taking place across the Los Angeles region), the work utilizes blocks of pastel-colored paint to activate the crosswalks connected to the museum.

The installation was designed to exist independently of the prototypical white striping that marks the existing crosswalk, incorporating green, orange, yellow, and blue hues. The Broad undertook great pains to comply with the City of Los Angeles’s permitting process for the installation, which required that the paint be applied in such a way as to retain the original sidewalk striping in its entirety. The paint itself was applied by student-artists from the nearby Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, a complex designed by architects Coop Himmelb(l)au.

The piece activates the public space around The Broad, embracing Grand Avenue and bringing the museum out into the daily life of pedestrians and our visitors, highlighting the ideas of an important Latin American artist whose career has spanned seven decades.

The art installation will be featured alongside explanatory materials displayed inside the museum and in conjunction with educational workshops put on by Learning Lab, an arm of the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. The installation is on view through the year and into 2018.

All Photographs Taken by Grace Lennon