Robert Therrien’s smashing retrospective is among the year’s best museum solo shows

Christopher Knight | LA Times | 25th November 2025

In the Broad Museum in LA, a 26 foot long table with matching 10 foot chairs is a hugely popular work. The key to this most acclaimed of Therrien’s works is not its size but what it evokes. Made exactly to scale, it reminds the viewer of “narratives and memories from childhood”. Similarly, a gigantic pile of plates forms a teetering sculpture that triggers our anxieties about plates breaking. Says a curator Therrien’s uncanny skill was to tap into the tension between “what an object is and what it means”.