Matt Harbicht

Meleko Mokgosi drew “Head of a Woman III” on a wall in the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center.

Magazine

Conversation Piece: The Art of Meleko Mokgosi

Ten years ago, an M.F.A. student — now a major artist — drew a portrait on a wall inside the Broad Art Center.

Magazine

Conversation Piece: The Art of Meleko Mokgosi

Ten years ago, an M.F.A. student — now a major artist — drew a portrait on a wall inside the Broad Art Center.

Matt Harbicht

Meleko Mokgosi drew “Head of a Woman III” on a wall in the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center.

John Harlow | Photos by Matt Harbicht

March 24, 2021

IN 2011, Meleko Mokgosi M.F.A. ’11 was asked to draw a 5-foot-by-7-foot portrait directly onto a wall in the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, which houses the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. When creating Head of a Woman III — which represents the powerful, poised women from his childhood in Botswana — Mokgosi says: “I had powerful conversations with people passing by — a uniquely UCLA experience.”

“It was a prescient commission by Barbara Drucker [then-associate dean at UCLA Arts],” says Victoria Steele ’74, M.L.I.S. ’81, curator emerita of UCLA’s public art collection. “It is a masterpiece of draftsmanship from Mokgosi, who is now an important figure in the art world.”