Broad Expands, Backed by Billion-Dollar Endowment
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| Rendering of expanded Broad. (c)Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Rendering by Plomp |
The Broad has announced a 55,000-sf expansion to its downtown building. The story's buried lede is that the Broad endowment now stands at close to $1 billion. That's far more than the $200 million endowment Eli Broad promised in 2011.
The planned expansion by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the original architects, is a concrete-clad structure adjacent to the older building, increasing gallery space by 70 percent. There will be galleries on all three floors of the new building; two outdoor courtyards on the top floor; space for performances and other public programs; and the ability to walk through an art-storage "vault." A covered plaza will welcome visitors from the Grand Avenue Arts/Bunker Hill Metro station. The project's cost is put at $100 million, with construction expected to begin early next year.
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| Amy Sherald, Kingdom, 2022. The Broad |
Director Joanne Heller cites the Broad's popularity as a reason for the expansion. Last year the Broad had 896,000 visitors. That's 3.6 times the 250,000 that had been expected when the building was designed.
Yet another reason is going largely unsaid: money. Robin Pogrebin's New York Times write-up says that the building and collection will be financed by "an endowment that currently amounts to approximately $1 billion."
Eli Broad's promise of a $200 million endowment was enough to make the Broad the second wealthiest L.A. museum after the Getty. As far as I can tell, there were no further announcements about the endowment or Broad's estate planning after his April 2021 death. A ~$1 billion endowment would rank with the biggest arts bequests in L.A. history.
In short, the Broad is expanding because it can afford it.
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| Rendering of expansion, with current building at right. (c)Diller Scofidio + Renfro |
Comments
Since 2015, I hoped it was going to be, or should have been, an outdoor sculpture garden. But then I wondered if it was controlled not by the Broad but instead by the city. So that the area was possibly set aside for a future residential or commercial project. So this is unexpected news.
However, the Broad still could use an outdoor space for displaying large sculptures, but additional gallery space will be more satisfying to the visitor. By contrast, MOCA across the street suffers because it's too much of a brief-in-out experience. It's unfortunate too since if its Geffen Contemporary wing a few miles to the east were sitting right next to the main building on Grand Ave, it would help resolve some of that.
As for the past 5-10 years, the Marciano Foundation's museum in 2016 in Millard Sheet's Masonic Temple building in mid-Wilshire closing in 2019 has been another type of unexpected news.
With the Lucas Museum, LACMA's Zumthor-Govan building and now this, there's some interesting changes occurring over the next 5 years.
Why can't New York do good things any more? So disconcerting.
The New Museum is all right, but it's nothing approaching Broad.
> any more?
The town that over the past 30-40 years has done an amount of expansion and development of its art scene that blows me away is France's capital. Paris since the 1970s contains way more than merely its grand, gargantuan, old-time Louvre.
Paris in Western Europe is to the cultural scene what mass-produced amusement parks are to Orlando in North America.
It's sort of what DS+R do in all their recent work, but here it took two buildings to do what they usually do in one building.
... Still have to see how DS+R handle the transition between the old and new building.
On the top floor, will they use the outdoor terrace to facilitate the transition between gallery spaces?
How will the loop (up and down) continue from there?
Very promising...
--- J. Garcin