Daytime

In this February 16, 2023, edition of LA County Library’s Heart & Hand Book Talk Series, watch Oliver James, one of the brightest new stars on TikTok’s BookTok platform. His story makes for one of the most uplifting in the whole literary world: he taught himself to read at the age of 34 by leveraging TikTok. Oliver is also a fitness aficionado and personal trainer who got started on his reading journey while working out, and now he’s set a “modest” goal of reading 100 books this year. We promise you will come away from this talk inspired! The Heart and Hands Book Talk Series hopes to inspire people to open their hearts and minds by challenging existing perceptions about systemic racism and injustice against people of color. Developed as part of LA County Library’s Equity Initiative, these talks feature discussions on thought-provoking literature as well as conversations with noted authors and speakers. The Heart and Hands Book Talk Series is moderated by Skye Patrick, LA County Library Director.

Vamba Bility is a multidisciplinary artist whose work echoes the experience of the African diaspora. Having journeyed from Côte d’Ivoire to Guinea to the United States, Bility perceives this contested way of living as a blur, albeit one that is deeply intimate. In his hands, this blurred sensibility becomes a fluid movement that draws on various material histories. He expresses the reverberating motions of his existence by leaning on and weaving together mediums and materials such as painting, textiles, found objects, and sound. A cracked calabash gets sewn together. A torn canvas gets stitched as a salve. A painting is propped up by a brick or two. All of this is a form of mark-making that structures the landscape of diaspora as a material residue of atmosphere, of feeling, of process. Bility threads this through a shared poiesis—a bringing forth, a revelation—that sketches out an architecture of what it means to be.

An in-depth installation of Jean-Michel Basquiat, features all 13 works by the artist in the Broad collection, including three works on view for the first time at The Broad: Santo 2, Deaf, and Wicker.

Tuesday & Wednesday & Friday – 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Thursday – 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Saturday & Sundays – 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.